citizen and a legislator I claim the right to protect our children from the smut peddler and the unwholesome influence of his wares.

I defend the right of parents to protect their children from this pornographic material. They have spent years educating their children in the moral values of our society and now, we here in Congress, have the opportunity and obligation to help them by enacting responsible and reasonable laws to keep this highly undesirable material from reaching their children through mails.

I urge that this Subcommittee recognize the immediate need for this legislation in this day of "anything goes" to stop the traffic in filth that is so destructive to the moral fiber of our nation.

Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES A. HALEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS

FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA ON H.R. 5171 AND H.R. 12627
October 9, 1969

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee: I deeply appreciate the attention you are giving to H.R. 5171, and H.R. 12627, and the many other bills that Members of this Congress have introduced in an effort to halt this flood of pornography and obscene materials into the homes of the American people. I have joined as a co-sponsor of the two bills cited above because of the outrage of the people of my Congressional district over the deluge of unwanted, unsolicited pornographic materials that have been delivered to their children and to themselves. In my 17 years in the Congress, I have never known the people to become so indignant, so furious and shocked over a single issue as they have about their defenselessness against the purveyors of this filth. While they have exercised their rights under Public Law 90-206, filing with their postmaster the form by which they can reject future mailings from a particular firm, no sooner is this done than another publisher of filth and obscenity has their address or even worse the address of their child and new and more vile material comes to their post office box or door. They find themselves defenseless to this type of attack and become more outraged about it. They rightfully demand a solution to this problem.

We know that those who would destroy free nations have long used the technique of breaking down the moral conscience of free people. We know also that the Courts in upholding the quarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press have made it more difficult for the proper authorities to prosecute these cases. It is obvious that we must find a way to put teeth into the law to protect our people from the purveyors of filth and depravity.

I urge the Members of this Committee to consider carefully all of the legislation which is before you now and to bring to the Floor of the House a bill that will provide strong protection for our people from these publishers and distributors of filth and pornography. I urge you also to provide in that bill strict controls over the showing of movies and other presentations which would be harmful to the youth of the United States. Certainly the people of America deserve the right to protect themselves and their children from obscenity and pornography. They demand this protection and their demand should be met.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM H. HARSHA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO ON H.R. 7985

Mr. Chairman and members of this Distinguished Committee:

I deeply appreciate the privilege of this opportunity to present my views on the issue of the flow of hard-core pornography through the U.S. Mail.

This overwhelming deluge of unsolicited hard-core pornography, the largest volume of sex-oriented mail in the history of this country, has prompted me to introduce one bill, H.R. 7985, and co-sponsor three others this year alone.

Let me make this point clear from the beginning: it is evident that there is a definite need for stronger legislation to protect the individual from receiving unsolicited pornographic material through the mail.

It is in line with this thinking that I have repeatedly emphasized that the unsolicited mailing of hard-core pornography and its subsequent dissemination contributes to the deterioration of the National moral fiber, thought and conduct,

and its deleterious effects far outweigh any vague arguments about freedom of speech.

When I introduced H.R. 7985 which would prohibit the mailing of obscene material to persons under age 16, I told my distinguished colleagues in the House of Representatives last March: “It is not known precisely how many millions of dollars fall into the hands of pornographic profiteers each year; nor is it known precisely how many millions of dollars society pays for the resultant delinquency, violence and general criminal damage."

Now, Post Office statistics reveal that almost all of the pornographic material that is circulated, 80 percent is unsolicited and unwanted. Much of this material is quite obviously obscene, and deeply offensive to those who receive it. When recipients of such filth are the impressionable young, it can be dynamite.

Congress certainly should meet this problem head on and bring a halt to this unsavory practice. I must add, too, that a vast majority of American people apparently concur in this judgment, as many angry citizens are demanding better protection from this flood of filth.

Existing law has proved no longer effective in preventing profiteers from polluting the minds of our youth with pornography and exploiting the public for private gains. And even now, the publishers and distributors of pornography have been reported to be linked with the forces of organized crime which is known, as I am sure you are well aware, to be interested in profitable but disreputable undertakings.

At the moment, a citizen has only limited protection against the receipt of unwanted pornographic material through the mails. After receiving such mate rial, he must register a complaint with the postmaster and request that he and his family not receive any further material from these companies. This has only limited utility, however, because these companies are constantly changing their

names.

Pornographic profiteers have found another loophole in the Supreme Court interpretations of existing obscenity laws. For something to be "obscene" it must be "pandering to purient interests" and utterly without any redeeming social value." To escape prosecution under these terms, smut peddlers circulate their obviously lewd advertisements by labeling their merchandise as "designed for the intellectually and articulately minded" or by using some other high-sounding vague tout.

A case in point of such a circular is that of the Adult Novelty Company. Last May I received a complaint from a concerned constituent who had received one of the company's advertisements promoting "The Most Revealing Adult Movies and Photos ever." The single sheet flier contained four 'clips' from these movies which were so purposefully lurid and prurient pandering as to qualify them as unquestionably obscene and pornographic. I therefore referred the material to Attorney General Mitchell to prosecute the person or persons doing business in this manner under the name of “Adult Novelty Co. . . ."

Mr. Chairman and Distinguished members of the Subcommittee #3, this is not an isolated case. I am sure you are aware that many members of the House and Senate have received similar complaints from irate constituents; however, we are all at an impasse to aid them in these matters if our current laws are not stringent enough.

The legislation I have introduced provides greater protection in clearly unmistakable terms for the individual, particularly the impressionable young, from an onslaught of unsolicited pornographic material through the mail. Furthermore, these bills would curb the flow of unwanted pornographic material through the mail. There is no telling how much damage unsolicited pornographic and obscene material in the mail has wrought and it is time to put an end to this abuse of the postal system and affront to moral dignity.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES HARVEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN ON H.R. 6000, OCTOBER 24, 1969

Mr. Chairman, I express to you and other Members of the House Committee on the Judiciary my appreciation for this opportunity to present my statement on legislation dealing with the mailing of obscene matter such as the measure I introduced last February, H.R. 6000.

I would particularly like to cite very recent developments by our United States Post Office Department which, on September 30, 1969, announced that it had

revoked the post office box privileges of eight dealers in sexually oriented materials. I congratulate the Department and I trust it will keep up this good work. I would commend the Department also for its special efforts to inform mail patrons that there are some steps that can be taken now to curb the flow of offensive advertisements into their homes under the provisions of the Pandering Advertisements Law that became effective in April, 1968.

The Administration, of course, has already gone on record for more effective legislation in this area. Permit me to quote President Nixon, who recently stated: "To prevent the use of the nation's postal system for the mailing of unsolicited sex-oriented materials to families that do not want the materials and to children to whom it might do psychological harm, I offered three legislative proposals that will protect American citizens from the barrages of the filth peddlers, and will also be consistent with the decisions of the United States Supreme Court interpreting the First Amendment. These bills are still in Congress. I ask that they be promptly enacted."

But, I believe the true measure of citizen support for appropriate Congressional action is found in the fact that over 240 Members of Congress have introduced bills on this subject. This truly reflects the will of the people to "clean" the mail service of filth.

A constituent provided me with an appropriate comment on this general subject. I was told that we have done a great deal about air and water pollution. More must be done, but we have started. Now, we must remove the pollution being carried in our mail. Its pollution is as bad, if not worse than that we have experienced in our air and our water. This pollution through our mail can spread a sickness and a disease for which there is no cure. This is why that all decent citizens realize that it is time to cleanse the United States mail from the pollution of smut and pornography.

To further emphasize citizen reaction, I would like to mention a personal experience this summer. Late in July, I greeted a small delegation who came to Washington at their own expense. I emphasize it was a small delegation but they carried with them a powerful package-over 16,000 signatures from the Port Huron, Michigan, area. Their petition, received by Senator Robert P. Griffin. of Michigan, myself and Robert Odle, of the White House staff, called for "an end to the filth, smut, obscenity, violence and indecent sex scenes and plots which are being foisted upon the American public in movies, over television, radio, magazines, and other communications media."

The petition was sponsored by the St. Clair County Crusade for Decency. Mrs. R. Gerald Barr, of Port Huron, served as Chairman and made this special trip to Washington along with her mother, Mrs. William Kress, and Mrs. John Weiss, of Port Huron.

I believe the vast majority of the people in the United States have made it clear that they want a pollution drive on the obscene publications and materials coming through the mail. I believe Members of Congress concur.

While most adults shall always be guided by their own personal standards of taste and morality, there is no reason why we can't cleanse the mail to prevent children from being exposed to such filth in that fashion. I am proud that this Congress now is weighing the best possible legislative means to curb the flow of offensive material.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

STATEMENT OF HON. LAWRENCE J. HOGAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND, DECEMBER 10, 1969

Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen, I wish to call to your attention H.R. 10076, my bill to prohibit the dissemination through interstate commerce or the mails of material harmful to persons under the age of 18 years and to restrict the exhibition of movies or other presentations to such persons, as well as to prohibit the importation of such material for the above purposes.

I am sure there is no need for me to impress upon you the great need for some type of legislation to protect our children from the free-flowing filth which is too readily available to our curious and highly impressionable youth.

Concerned parents in my district regularly write to express their disbelief and infuriation at the type of pornography available on the newsstands, at the theaters and particularly being thrust into the home, unsolicited, through the mail. I receive such comments as ". . . the pictures of the items offered for sale

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were shocking to me . . . and I've been married 26 years. . . . Can nothing be done to stop this? Think of the effect on young people, or borderline mental cases, or psychotic persons, or just plain decent people. Please help if you can." Mrs. Margaret A. Shriver, Vice-Chairman of the Maryland State Motion Picture Censor Board, called to my attention the many letters and phone calls the Board has received in regard to a particular film being shown through the country. In her letter, Mrs. Shriver also stated ". . . because we review every film which plays in Maryland we are in a unique position to see that the amount of perversion, sexual aberration, violence and obscenity depicted in films is increasing at an alarming rate and cannot help but create additional problems for youth during the impressionable, confused and ambivalent years during which they struggle for healthy maturity . . ." She went on to state, regarding that particular film, ". . . if we find the film as explicit as reports have described

it but we are still forced to release it, with or without review by the courts. there are no laws in our state to keep children out of the theater at which the picture would play, other than the voluntary policy of each individual theater owner. At least let us say that to our knowledge, the laws on the books which are supposed to protect youth against obscenity have not been tested in the courts in regards to films."

In testimony before Congress last year, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover also gave an indication of the harmful effects of pornographic material upon youth and society, when he said:

"It is impossible to estimate the amount of harm to impressionable teenagers and to assess the volume of sex crimes attributable to pornography, but its influence is extensive.

"Sexual violence is increasing at an alarming pace. Many parents are deeply concerned. . . . Pornography in all its forms is one . . . major cause of sex crimes, sexual aberrations and perversions."

Under my bill, it would be a violation of Federal law to knowingly sell, offer for sale, loan, deliver, distribute or provide to a minor in interstate commerce or through the mails, material which is defined as "harmful to minors" in the bill. It would further be a Federal crime to knowingly exhibit to a minor a motion picture, show, or presentation which falls in the "harmful to minors" category. In view of the fact that a large portion of the films such as the ones described by Mrs. Shriver, is imported from foreign countries, I have included language to make it unlawful for any person to knowingly import material harmful to minors for the same purposes as stated above.

My bill would further remove the appellate jurisdiction on the issue of whether a particular item or movie is "harmful to minors" as defined by the bill. Since the definition of this terminology might differ in various areas, I believe it is best to permit varying decisions on this point in the local district courts.

It would appear from the Supreme Court's decision in Ginsberg v. New York (that a New York statute was constitutional which prohibited the sale to persons under 17 years of age of materials defined to be obscene to them even though the same material might not be obscene to adults) that this approach, being patterned after the New York statute, would be held constitutional.

I realize that this is only one of the many proposals which have been presented to your Subcommittee to deal with this problem, and I do appreciate having the opportunity to express my views on this legislation. At the same time, however, I wish to assure you, in advance, of my wholehearted support for the measure that this Subcommittee and the Judiciary Committee, after in-depth consideration of the problem and proposals, report out as their recommended approach to keep this type of material out of the hands of our young people.

STATEMENT OF HON. CRAIG HOSMER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: I am happy to have the opportunity to submit a statement for the record in connection with your hearings on obscene mail.

Just a few weeks ago I received a great many letters from residents of Adderley Drive in Long Beach, California. They were up in arms en masse because of advertisements addressed to ADULT HOUSEHOLDER ONLY and printed on the front of the envelope was a statement to the effect that the material inside

was intended for adults only and anyone under 18 who opened the letter would be guilty of committing a crime. This is apparently a new approach used by the senders of this filth and would certainly have a tendency to stimulate the interest of youthful members of a household. The vast majority of decent, lawabiding citizens demand that we act and, in my opinion, they have a right to expect that we protect the privacy of their homes from the peddlers of this offensive material.

I can think of no more important legislative business for this Committee and for this Congress to undertake then to come up with a law which will put an end to the activities of these dealers in pornography. Congress has in the past enacted laws which were intended to prevent the use of the mail system for dissemination of sex materials. At this time we need further laws to make it a criminal offense to send through the mail or in interstate commerce advertisements designed or intended to appeal to a prurient interest in sex. Such a law would prohibit the mailing of many of the advertisements that are responsible for our present problem.

Thank you again for permitting me to submit this statement.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN E. HUNT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY ON H.R. 8397, SEPTEMBER 29, 1969

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, my comments are addressed to the subject of H.R. 8397, introduced by Congressman Wylie and me, to amend title 18 of the U.S. Code to prohibit the dissemination through interstate commerce or the mails of obscene materials to persons under the age of eighteen years, and to restrict the exhibition of movies or other obscene matter to such persons.

That large volumes of unsolicited, sexually-oriented, pandering advertisements are finding their way into the hands of curious youth, there seems to be no disagreement. Whether within or without the U.S. Supreme Court's so-called "tests" as to what is or is not "obscene", there likewise seems to be overwhelming agreement that at least with respect to youth, such materials have a corrupting influence on both mind and morals. Charges that present-day values have little relevance to the "puritanical" days of the past are immaterial at the moment, because it is the adult community that is seeking relief from such corrupting influences on its youth. As the law looks to the parents in the rearing of their children to adulthood, it is to them that we are responsible for finding the means to provide the relief they seek.

This Subcommittee, in terms of fact-finding, will have little difficulty in defining the existence of the problem-namely, the virtually unrestricted distribution of obscene materials to minors, here defined as persons under the age of 18

years.

Most difficult, admittedly, is the task of drafting and wording legislation that will effectively curb the dissemination of smut to minors, while at the same time proscribing the types of material and conduct to be prohibited which will not, at the outset, be plainly contrary to the Constitutional parameters ascertainable from decisions of the Supreme Court. On the other hand, I believe the Congress shirks its responsibility and avoids the exercise of its rightful authority if it merely follows the Court's lead. In other words, Congressional policy must be decisive enough so as to eliminate what has come to be a piecemeal process of filling the statutory voids by judicial construction, a prerogative which lies more appropriately with the Congress.

To be sure, the judicially prescribed "tests" of obscenity are vague and ambiguous in themselves and are not conducive to giving even the most reasonable person due notice as to the types of material or conduct which might be prohibited and punishable as a crime. A brief accounting of these so-called "tests" will demonstrate the point:

1. Beginning with Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), matter is obscene if "to the average person applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest". 2. The Roth test was expanded in Manual Enterprises Inc. v. Day, 370 U.S. 478 (1962) to include a second element: "These magazines cannot be deemed so offensive on their face as to affront current community standards of decencya quality that we shall hereafter refer to as 'patent offensiveness' or 'indecency' ”. (Emphasis added)