The sultans of smut. (The Last Word).(community moral standards)(Brief Article)

At the time of its 1953 release, the Doris Day musical By the Light of the Silvery Moon earned nostalgic chuckles for its depiction of Milburn, a mythical World War I-era Indiana town. So foreign are the Midwestern manners and mores displayed in that film that many contemporary viewers might doubt such a culture ever existed.

A key subplot in the movie involves the efforts of George Winfield to sanitize the script of a play. Acting on behalf of the town bank, which owns the local theater, Winfield asks the production's lead actress to delete a scene suggesting an extra-marital affair. The actress, a French faux-sophisticate, observes that the play had been performed in larger cities without complaint. With firm politeness Winfield points out that Milburn has its own standards, and he is expected to uphold them. Grudgingly, the actress relents.

"But that's censorship!" cries the typical viewer. To which the proper response is: "And your point would be...?" In the federalist system created through the Constitution, states and local communities retained the power to establish and enforce standards of decency.

In the early decades of the 20th century, the radical left -- as embodied in the ACLU and kindred organizations -- began undermining the ability of communities to protect their moral integrity. Invoking the threat to "freedom of expression" posed by community standards of decency, cultural subversives used the federal courts to strike down nearly all attempts to enforce those standards. One prominent participant in, and obvious beneficiary of, this assault on federalism is the pornography industry.

The blight George Winfield tried to contain was a single opaque reference to adultery. Today he couldn't visit a grocery store in Milburn without running a gauntlet of quasi-pornographic magazine covers. Inquiring further George might learn that most Milburn homes are connected to the porn industry by way of satellite dish, cable television, or the Internet. Should George voice outrage over this repellent spectacle, someone will patiently explain to him that nothing can be done -- it's the marketplace at work, servicing the needs of a diverse "community." But that word doesn't apply: A community is something more than a cluster of consumers defined by their appetites.

The key element of the "obscenity test" created by the Supreme Court's 1973 Miller v. California decision is the question of community standards; at least on paper, the High Court deigns to allow communities to outlaw materials that are patently perverse. But applying this test requires a compliant judiciary. In 1989, notes former California Lieutenant Governor John Harmer in his book A War We Must Win, "a Los Angeles Superior Court ...