Fighting Fire with Fire

The phrase "banned in Boston" has been a titillating endorsement of smut for generations. Recently, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down all the Commonwealth's obscenity laws as unconstitutionally vague, leaving literally nothing taboo in Cotton Mather's old domain. To fill the moral vacuum, the Massachusetts legislature's joint judiciary committee drew up a bill so graphic that when it was read aloud on the house floor by Representative Barney Frank, spectators in the gallery gasped.

A sensitive colleague asked Frank to halt his reading of the explicit passages. "There's a typical censor's mentality," quipped Frank. "The representative wants to keep all the fun for himself."

Its critics did not think the bill's raunchy descriptions were so funny, but the house approved the proposal with the language almost intact. Its restrictions could prohibit virtually any form of erotic material deemed pornographic by community standards -- from films and paintings to magazines and books.

Final passage in the senate some time this session is considered certain. In bygone years the bill itself would have been banned in Boston.

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