Slate: “At the end of August, in a courtroom in Virginia Beach, a judge will decide whether to put two books on trial for obscenity.
This is a strange sentence to write, and I expect a strange sentence to read, because these days books don’t go on trial for obscenity. Books haven’t really gone on trial for obscenity since landmark 20th-century cases determined that first James Joyce’s Ulysses, and then Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, could not be banned by the government. Like most Americans, you might believe books have a settled status in our culture—that even if they contain sexual material, they’re protected by the First Amendment.
Tim Anderson disagrees. He’s the man trying to get the books declared obscene—and, in the process, change obscenity law in the United States. Anderson, a lawyer and Republican Virginia state delegate whose district includes Virginia Beach, will argue the case later this month. (Another Republican, Tommy Altman, filed the petition; Altman recently lost his primary for a House seat in Virginia’s 2nd district.) The petition is a new twist on recent right-wing attacks on materials that address sexuality, gender, and race. Rather than demanding that school boards or librarians remove books, the current case takes the books to court, using an obscure Virginia law that would allow the judge, if she found the books obscene, to ban bookstores, libraries, and even private citizens from selling or sharing them, everywhere in Virginia.”