OLATHE, KS — Priscilla’s in Olathe, KS and Hollywood at Home in Overland Park, KS are learning first hand about the obsession of some people when it comes to matters of sex and obscenity. Both businesses have been indicted on multiple obscenity charges by a Johnson County grand jury. According to the Associated Press, at least two of the three businesses thus targeted do not plan on going gentle into that good court battle.
Richard Bryant, an attorney for Hollywood at Home – accused of selling four DVDs believed to be obscene — announced that “We are going to defend this as vigorously as we can.”
Bryant is baffled by the choice of videos selected; insisting that the company has been in compliance with the law for more than 20 years and that “the distributors of those videos have all indicated that they have never been subject to investigation in any state or in any city in the country.”
The company worked with a grand jury that issued a defining community standards statement in 1989 that explained what would be considered obscene.
A legal representative for Priscilla’s, which is also accused of selling sex toys and a DVD deemed obscene, indicated that the company planned to contest the indictments.
Spirit Halloween in Overland Park is accused of presenting obscene adult sized Halloween costumes in the view of minors.
“This is the grand jury’s mandate,” Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline’s representative told the AP. “They’ve not handed down these indictments and asked us to enforce Kansas law. It will be assigned to a prosecutor and proceed just like any other misdemeanor case.”
As expected, conservative social groups are proclaiming the indictments as a victory against wickedness.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with how things are progressing,” Phillip Cosby, chapter leader of the local National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families declared. “Awareness is our goal,” he continued. “And people are having the conversation… It’s like law enforcement is almost breathing a sigh of relief that finally, the cavalry is coming and they don’t have to do this alone.”
“This,” presumably, is telling people what items they may place against or in their bodies for pleasure and what mutually consensual activities between erotically inclined adults may be viewed.
Cosby has complained to the National Law Journal that “More and more prosecutors have a sense that nobody cares about obscenity laws, so they are not going to file charges. We don’t believe their perception is correct, so we need to demonstrate to prosecutors there is still a number of people that do care about obscenity laws.”
The Kansas grand jury is the first convened since 1989 and, along with another in Wyandotte County, were brought into being thanks to conservative citizen groups that petitioned the government to investigate businesses they insisted were engaged in the sale of obscene goods.
In other court news, the United States Supreme Court has refused to resolve the nine year battle to determine whether the government of Alabama has the right to deny its citizens the opportunity to purchase sex toys within the state, instead of buying them elsewhere.
