Obscenity Trial in Los Angeles

Obscenity Trial in Los Angeles
Warning: perhaps a bit more graphic than some of you may want to read.

This is an unpleasant article from the June 10, 2008 Washington Post. It's about something unpleasant. The First Amendment was never meant to protect obscenity--and if this doesn't qualify as obscenity, what does?

LOS ANGELES -- What violates community obscenity standards in the nation's reputed pornography capital? Federal prosecutors think they have a case.
Ira Isaacs readily admits he produced and sold movies depicting bestiality and sexual activity involving feces and urine. The judge warned potential jurors that the hours of fetish videos included violence against women, and many of them said they don't want to serve because watching would make them sick to their stomachs.
"It's the most extreme material that's ever been put on trial. I don't know of anything more disgusting," said Roger Jon Diamond _ Isaacs' own defense attorney.
The case is the most visible effort of a new federal task force designed to crack down on smut in America. Isaacs, however, says his work is an extreme but constitutionally protected form of art.
"There's no question the stuff is disgusting," said Diamond, who has spent much of his career representing pornographers. "The question is should we throw people in jail for it?"
Isaacs, 57, a Los Angeles advertising agency owner who says he used to market fine art in commercial projects, calls himself a "shock artist" and says he went into distributing and producing films about fetishes because "I wanted to do something extreme."
"I'm fighting for art," he said in an interview before his federal trial got under way. "Art is on trial."

Oh yes, it's art! That excuses everything, doesn't it? Isaacs' excuses just get better and better:

Diamond said Isaacs also will tell jurors the works have therapeutic value for people with the same fetishes depicted on screen.
"They don't feel so isolated," Diamond said. "They have fetishes that other people have."

Sorry, but I want people like that to feel isolated. Maybe, if they feel isolated enough, they will decide to seek help--instead of forming yet another identity group to which the Democratic Party can pander.

The jury selection process sounds pretty unpleasant:

When jury selection began Monday, he urged prospects to be open about their opinions and incurred an onslaught of negative statements. Within the first hour, he dismissed 26 men and women who said they could not be fair to the defendant because they were repulsed by the subject matter. By day's end, half the panel of 100 had been excused.
"I think watching something like that would make me physically ill, nauseous," said one woman. "It's affecting me physically now just thinking about it."
One man fired angry comments at the ponytailed Isaacs.
"Hearing stuff about feces made me sick and the defendant looks like my ex-business partner who did some of these things. He looks guilty as sin to me," said the man. "It turns my stomach thinking about it."
Several prospects marched up to the judge's bench for private conferences when he told them that the films also involved violence against women. They, too, were excused, as were several who cited their religious beliefs.

So, who is left in the panel? Those who aren't repulsed by this sort of thing. Those who lack the honesty to say that they are repulsed by it. Those who are sufficiently rational to be repulsed, but not let it prevent them from serving on a jury. Hmmm. That doesn't sound like a very representative panel to me.