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Alfred Kinsey — Part 2
Page 30
30 / 38
er hah,
MR hagte Tose wa ee TH tage ge . a oy ety
NY OR. USWA A
asp ER
The Government, in certain portions of its Memo-
randum of Law, talks of, and I find two cases?” which have
described material as being "obscene per se." But I cannot
understand this to mean that the material was held to have
& prurient appeal without reference to any beholder. I take
it to mean that in the cases under decision there was not shown
39 gnited states v. Rebhuhn, 109 F.2d 522 (24 Cir.),
cert. denie Se ; United States v. Newman,
° 2d Cir. 1944). But the court in Re also
paid:"Most of the books could lawfully have passe
the mails, if directed to those who would be likely to use
them for the purposes for which they were written, though that
was not true of one or two; for example, of that entitled,
*Sex Life in England', which was a collection of short and
condensed erotic bits, culled from various sources, and plainly
put together as pornography .... (Wie will assume ... t the
works themselves had a place, though a limited one, in anthro-
pology and in psychotherapy. They might also have been law-
fully sold to laymen who wished seriously to study the sexual
practices of savage or barbarous peoples, or sexual aberrations;
in other words, most of them were not obscene per se. In
several decisions we have held that the statute does not in
all circumstances forbid the dissemination of such publications,
and that in the trial of an indictment the prosecution must
prove that the accused has abused a conditional privilege, which’
the law gives him. [Citing Dennett, Wysees, and Levine. |
However, in the case at bar, the prosecution succeeded upon
that issue, when it showed that the defendants had indiscrimi-~
nately flooded the mails with advertisements, plainly designed
merely to catch the prurient, though uncer the guise of dis-
tributing works of scientific or literary merit. We do not
mean that the distributor of such works is charged with a duty
to insure that they shall reach only proper hands, nor need we
easy What care he must use, for these defendants exceeded any
Possible limits; the circulars were no more than appeals to the
Salaciously disposed, and no sensible jury could have failed
to pierce the fragile screen, set up to cover that purpose." |
109 F.2d 512, 514-5 (2a Cir. 1940). .
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