Buying Gay by David K. Johnson

Buying Gay by David K. Johnson

Author:David K. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press


ARRESTS BEGIN

The series of arrests and hearings that would bring Womack to the Supreme Court began in January 1960, when he and two of his photographers—G. Rodney Crowther and Frank Collier—were arrested for placing nude photos in the U.S. mail. They began like the scores of similar raids on physique photography studios organized by Postmaster General Summerfield’s crackdown on mail-order pornography. First Womack was arrested by federal authorities for his mail-order business. Then the Post Office seized his magazines. Finally local vice officers raided his printing facility. As was often the case, federal and local authorities acted as a tag team to knock out their targets. Because of the numerous convictions and appeals, this series of cases would outlast Summerfield’s tenure and be vigorously pursued by his successor, Edward J. Day. Although typical in many ways, these law enforcement operations would have a different outcome, one that would transform the field.

According to Chief Postal Inspector David H. Stephens, the raid of Womack’s 14th Street printing plant and seizure of his forty-thousand-name mailing list was the culmination of a three-month campaign during which postal authorities had infiltrated the mailing list with decoy letters.26 But the raid caught Womack by surprise. He had recently assured a colleague, “I am now more convinced that the P.O. is going to do nothing to us for simple nudes and I feel that we can settle down and put our operations on a systematic basis.”27 He had consulted with Post Office investigators about the legality of the photographs and received assurances of their mailability.28

Womack soon discovered that the Post Office, the press, and the courts considered him a threat to society. Headlines about the raid in local newspapers stressed that he was an “educator” and “ex-professor,” raising the specter of Womack’s potential nefarious influence on children. At the federal district court trial in Washington, D.C., prosecutors followed a similar strategy by calling teenage boys to testify that they had received Womack’s mailings.29 Seventy-four-year-old Judge Alexander Holtzoff was clearly unsympathetic to Womack’s case. He refused to allow most of the defense witnesses to testify, insisting that only priests and rabbis were qualified to make determinations about “community standards.” He barred Womack’s attorney from presenting a replica of Michelangelo’s statue of David to make a similar point. By contrast, the U.S. attorney was allowed to present seventeen witnesses from around the country.

In March the jury convicted Womack of multiple counts of obscenity and he was sentenced to one to three years in prison. Judge Holtzoff released him pending an appeal but promised to send him to prison if he continued publishing such images. Womack considered the entire process to be “legal harassment” and vowed “I intend to carry this up to the Supreme Court if I have to.”30

Emboldened by Womack’s conviction, the Post Office moved within weeks to impede the sale of his magazines. “Once Herman Womack was convicted in the federal court here,” Womack’s attorney explained, “the Post Office made up their mind that they were going to stop these magazines.



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