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Dreamworld Testing Ky Porn Law

GRAY, Kentucky – Issues of obscenity, morality, freedom of choice and enterprise and even zoning — itself a dirty word to many in rural Kentucky — are playing out in the controversy over a new store in Knox County that sells pornographic magazines, sex toys and graphic movies.

The store, Dreamworld, had been open only four days on busy U.S. 25E just east of Corbin when Knox County sheriff’s deputies arrested the owner and one employee on May 14.

The arrests set the stage for a court fight that could have implications for communities across the state.

Police charged Dreamworld owner Jeree Mills, 58, and employee Belinda K. Brown, 38, with violating the state law against distributing obscene matter, a misdemeanor. Mills and Brown pleaded not guilty and have a hearing scheduled for later this month.

Their attorney, H. Louis Sirkin of Cincinnati, said he will seek to have the charges dismissed.

Sirkin, who has represented Hustler magazine publisher Larry-Flynt and represents Flynt’s brother Jimmy in his effort to open a Hustler store in Lexington, said he also will challenge the constitutionality of the state obscenity law.

Mills is determined to fight the charges and keep the store open, said store manager-Leanna Philpot, who spoke on behalf of her boss. Mills did not respond to an interview request.

Philpot said Dreamworld shut down for more than three weeks after the arrests, but reopened June 3 after Mills consulted with Sirkin. The publicity generated by controversy has been a gold mine for the store, Philpot said.

“Ever since we reopened, it’s been booming,” Philpot said. “They’ve done our business wonders.”

Some opponents would like to have the store shut down short of waiting for the conclusion of the criminal trial, which could take some time. But what they can or will do isn’t clear.

The county adopted an ordinance 11 years ago barring the sale of obscene material, and two stores stopped selling such material in response, the Rev. Leonard Lester said.

Some opponents mentioned pushing the county to enforce that rule in an attempt to close Dreamworld.

However, the ordinance is modeled on state obscenity law, and would require the same court process to enforce.

Opponents of the store would like to see more arrests.

But Carl Bolton, chief deputy for the sheriff’s office, said he did not anticipate more arrests at the store until the courts provide some answers about whether products there are obscene.

The fiscal court put a 90-day moratorium on new adult-oriented businesses, but there’s a question about whether that would stand up to a challenge, Deputy Judge-Executive Bruce Murphy said.

As a practical matter, he said, “If there was not a demand, there would be no supply.”

The store is a visible symbol of what many in the county see as sin, and it caused an outcry. Some people estimated that as many as 300 opponents crowded the courthouse the day Mills and Brown were arraigned.

In interviews, opponents said they object to the store for a number of reasons, including concerns that it will drive down property values and draw sexual predators to the neighborhood. There are homes and businesses near the store, including a day-care center called Bullfrogs & Butterflies across the divided, four-lane highway.

“It’s going to bring what I consider bad elements into the community,” said Darrell Warren, a Baptist minister who operates an auto-body repair shop, the Top Gun Collision Center, next door. “Morally, it’s not a good thing.”

Paul Frederick, who owns the day-care center and is a Baptist minister, said there are sex criminals in the county already. He is concerned that having pornography more readily available could inflame them and worsen the problem of addiction to such material, and increase victimization of children and women.

Graphic pornography promotes an unhealthy view of sexuality and causes problems in relationships, some opponents said.

“I don’t want to see it open,” said Lester, pastor of First Advent Christian Church in Bar-bourville.

Frederick said that before the store opened, he assumed — incorrectly, he learned — that there were zoning rules to prevent adult-oriented businesses from opening near homes or day-care center.

Knox County has no zoning regulations, but the controversy over the store has prompted talk about such land-use rules.

“I’m sure people will try to figure out what can be done to keep this from happening again,” Frederick said.

Zoning could be a hard sell, however. Murphy, the deputy judge-executive, said many county residents find zoning more objectionable than pornography.

The people involved in Dreamworld are not monsters or perverts, but just ordinary citizens trying to operate a business that, so far, has provided six jobs in a place where they can be hard to come by, said Philpot, the manager.

She said the county has serious problems, such as drug abuse and poverty, that should concern church people more than an adult bookstore.

Philpot said the store has not put up provocative signs on the road because the owners didn’t want to offend people. And when Dreamworld first opened — in a building once occupied by a religious radio station — it was closed most of Sunday.

Once the store reopened after Mills and Brown were arrested, however, it went to seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

“They didn’t respect us, so … ,” Philpot said.

She said the store won’t be a place where sex criminals will congregate. There is security outside the store, as well as video surveillance inside and out, and signs prohibit drugs, alcohol and people younger than 18 on the property.

Philpot said several people showed up with children and were told to leave, because youngsters aren’t allowed in the store and it wouldn’t be legal to leave them in the car while the parents shopped.

From the perspective of the store, the issue in the controversy is the right of adults to buy legal products protected by the First Amendment.

“Nobody makes anybody come up here. People have choices that come in here,” Philpot said. “That’s why we’re living in America, not in Iraq.”

The state law at issue in the case set up a three-part test on what is obscene, and it shows that the cases can be anything but black and white.

The test: to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the predominant appeal of the material, taken as a whole, is to prurient interest in sexual conduct; and the material depicts the sexual conduct in a “patently offensive” way; and the material, taken as a whole, has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

“You really don’t know what’s obscene until five justices of the (U.S.) Supreme Court say it is,” Sirkin said.

And with explicit sexual material available on cable television, the Internet and satellite television, defining contemporary community standards has gotten more complex.

Sirkin said his challenge to the charges against Mills and Brown will cite a decision from last year in which the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against homosexual sodomy. The opinion is relevant because it affirmed a right to sexual privacy in one’s home, Sirkin said.

That right encompasses a right to buy and sell materials such as those at Dreamworld, he argues.

“This is just an inherent American right to make decisions that affect me personally and do not harm anyone else,” Sirkin said.

Knox County Attorney Charley Greene Dixon, whose office will prosecute Mills and Brown, did not return a phone call seeking comment about the case.

Bolton, the deputy, predicted that a local court would convict Mills and Brown, but the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the case if it went that far.

“If you could shut ’em down,” he said of stores like Dreamworld, “they’d be shut down all over the country.”

 

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