From: leavitt@armory.com (Thomas Leavitt)
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty
Subject: _Austin Chronicle_ on Mike Diana
Date: 25 Apr 1994 18:14:36 GMT
Organization: The Armory
Lines: 187
Message-ID: <2ph1aq$eo5@nic.scruz.net>


Attn: net.citizens!

 I'm forwarding the following article to as many people as I can 
think of, as I believe that the precedent established here is
extremely dangerous to fundamental freedoms. Clearly,
rights of free speech, privacy, and "preventative detention"
are involved. The decision outlined here is absolutely 
unbelievable! By these standards, a huge number of publishers,
zine and professional, and individuals writing horror, erotica
and any other form of fiction, as well as those reporting and
commenting on these, in artistic/satirical form are threatened.
As a zine/publisher, I find the thought of having to abide by
the lowest common denominator of community standards
absolutely intolerable!

I will be posting this to various appropriate newsgroups,
mailing every single Congressperson with an e-mail address,
phoning my representatives and forwarding this to every
person I can think of.

I hope you can find the time to scan it and take some
action of your own.

Thomas Leavitt



From: mirele@bga.com (Deana Holmes)
Newsgroups: alt.zines
Subject: _Austin Chronicle_ on Mike Diana
Date: 24 Apr 1994 00:11:25 -0500
Organization: The Cat's Pajamas, Austin, Texas
Lines: 151

By popular demand...from the Austin _Chronicle_, April 22, 1994.
Reprinted without permission.  You can assume that most typos are mine.


Media Clips by Hugh Forrest

NOW THAT'S OBSCENE:  Is Austin a better place to live now that two
people who aired a sexually explicit video on ACTV have been convicted
of obscenity charges?  Perhaps it is.  Perhaps it's completely
inappropriate that youngsters be exposed to such material in their
living rooms--yet, one wonders if tender, impressionable youngsters are
the ones watching television at 2am.

Then again, few if any of the people who were so offended by the
_Infosex_ footage were viewing the program or were even awake when the
problematic segments were aired.  But an important principle was being
established here and the eventual outcome of this court case was well
worth the efforts of the numerous lawyers that were involved in the
protracted legal process.  Thank goodnes the only kind of safe sex we'll
now see on our televisions is the kind approved by the network moguls
and their million-dollar cronies in the advertising industry.

While the outcome of the Austin trial is unfortunate, it pales in
comparison to the proceedings of a recent obscenity case in Florida.  On
March 25, a Pinellas County jury convicted 24-year-old cartoonist
Michael Diana of three counts of publishing and advertising obscenity.
His crime?  Producing and contributing ortwork to about 300 copies of
the very, very offbeat fanzine entitle _Boiled Angel_, a single copy of
which was sold in the county in which these charges were filed.  During
his trial, a local psychologist who testified for the prosecution said
that normal people would find the publication "worthless or disgusting"
while other such experts surmised that the articles in _Bolied Angel_
might incite criminal activity.  About $50,000 in taxpayer-funded court
costs later, the young artist was found guilty, scoring a big victory
for decency and presumably making St. Petersburg a much safer place to
live.

Diana's troubles started in 1992 when one of the suspects from the
notorious coed murders in Gainesville was found to have a copy of
_Boiled Angel_ in his apartment.  As a result, Diana, as well, quickly
became a suspect in these killings.  Police took a blood sample from
him; when it did not match evidence from the scene of the crime, he was
off the hook.  Still the so-called authorities were distrubed at the
images they had seen in this photocopied publication.  They told him he
should quit producing this filth, advice he politely ignored.  Later, he
produced _Boiled Angel #7_ and _Boiled Angel #Ate_.  Diana sent one of
these copies to a man from St. Petersburg who had corresponded to [sic]
him repeatedly.  This man was, in fact, a police officer and shortly
thereafter the cartoonist was arrested on obscenity charges.

_Boiled Angel may not be the kind of material you'd want your
pre-schooler reading, but as `zines go, there is much harsher stuff.  As
publisher, Diana seems particularly fascinated--perhaps disturbed is a
better word--by family violence.  One eight-page strip in the
publication entitled "Baby Fucked Dog Food" describes the cycle of child
abuse and concludes when the family dog exacts his sodomic revenge on
the evil father.  Another page featured the tongue-in-cheek list "How to
Be a Successful Serial Killer."  Insofar as the drawings that Diana
himself produces for his publication, priests with gigantic penises that
seek out young boys seem to be a favorite subject.

"His artwork is brutal," says Shane Bugbee, of Michael Hunt Publishing
in Chicago.  "But then again he's dealing with brutal subjects such as
child molestation."  Asked where he gets his ideas for these sketches,
the soft-spoken Diana responds that they come from watching the news and
reading newspapers.  "I guess I tend to fcus on the ugly side of
existence," he notes.

Pinellas County porosecutors, however, were convinced that these
drawings add more than focus to the ugly side of life.  Speaking to the
jury, County Attorney Stuart Baggish painted a scenario in which people
reading this publication would eventually turn to photos for further
stimulation, then to films, then to recreating these situations in real
ife.  The defense responded with testimoy from fanzine experts such as
_Factsheet Five_ publisher Seth Friedman.  Friedman and New York
illustrator Peter Kuper claimed that _Boiled Angel_ was an artform
specifically directed to other artists and `zine collectors.  This
argument bore little relevance to the jury, who only needed 90 minutes
to arrive at the guilty verdict.

As strange as the Diana case is, the strangest aspect of this latter-day
witch hunt are the various punishments issued by County Judge Walter
Fullerton.  Having been found guilty of the three obscenity charges,
Diana has been placed on probation for three years, must pay $3,000 in
fines and costs, contribute over 1,200 hours of community service, as
well as receive psychiatric counselfing.  Additionally, Judge Fullerton
ordered that he must enroll in a "journalism ethics" course in hopes
that he coan one day become a "responsible publisher."  Inferring from
his drawings that Diana is a potential child molester, Fullerton
mandated that he must stay away from those under 18 years of age; when
minors enter the convenience store at which he is now employed, he is
legally forbidden from emerging from behind the counter.

But, wait, it gets weirder still.  He is prohibited by court order from
publishing material that "_could_ be considered obscene."  Fullerton
also ordered that Diana could not create such material "even for your
own use."  In this scenario, the cartoonist's probation officer has been
authorized to make warrantless searches of his property to find doodles
that may violate this order.  As noted by "News of the Weird" founder
Chuck Shepherd, who wrote about this case for Tampa's _Creative Loafing_
and has a story on Diana that will appear in next month's _Playboy_,
"This is surely the only time that someone has been forbidden to make an
illegal speech, let alone arguably protected speech, to himself.  It is
the equivalent of forbidding someone to say 'fuck,' even if no one can
hear him."

Asked if he sees parallels between Diana's troubles in Florida and the
ACTV case in Austin, Shepherd, a former criminal lawyer, points out that
both "fit into the pattern of First Amendment wars in this country being
waged as culture wars.  Most of the really vigorous First Amendment
contests are now fought along cultural battle lines.  As opposed to
producers and retailers, they more and more pit people who believe in
expressing themselves in alternative ways versus prosecutors who don't
believe in the validity of such expressions.  In many of these cases,
the prosecutors come from a completely different cultural context than
those they have charged.  These prosecutors look for incidental sexual
references.  They view these references free of the irony in which they
may have been intended and assume they were produced for the purpose of
titillation."

Shepherd adds that Judge Fullerton and the prosecution team are confused
in their interpretation of prurient interest as it relates to the legal
definition of obscenity.  Since Diana did not intend or target the
"deviant community" with _Boiled Angel_, he feels that this case will be
overturned by a higher court, a court with a more sophisticated
understanding of the complexity of such laws.  Meanwhile, those wishing
to help underwrite these appeals may be interested in purchasing a
180-page edition titled "Fuck Florida."  This work, proceeds from which
will benefit Diana via the San Francisco-based Comic Book Legal Defense
Fund, features cover art by R. Crumb as well as renderings of Diana's
art by numerous other underground and semi-underground cartoonists.  For
ordering info, contact Shane Bugbee at Michael Hunt Publishings, Box
226, Bensonville, IL, 60106 (708/794-2723).

=========

The _Chronicle_ tends to be somewhat more sensitive to this sort of
stuff, as one of the local guardians of public decency (also the owner
of one of the largest porno collections in the county--for research, he
said), tried to get the _Chronicle_ removed from the free paper section
of a local supermarket chain a little over four years ago.  He succeeded
briefly, but the independent and _ad hoc_ boycott of the grocery chain
(not endorsed by the _Chronicle_) and the subsequent loss of sales
caused the chain to reinstate the _Chronicle_ within about a month.

Deana Holmes   | "i need love/not some sentimental prison
mirele@bga.com |  i need god/not the political church
               |  i need fire/to melt the frozen sea inside me
               |  i need love"  -- Sam (Leslie) Phillips