Surprise, Surprise: A Dirty Speech Is Illegal

In the now familiar politics of obscenity, it is taken for granted that speakers can jolt audiences with four-letter words. That notion may be premature. At the University of Utah last April, Black Militant Victor Gordon told the audience--students, local citizens, law-enforcement officials--that most Americans are too inhibited to utter the familiar earthy phrase that is a blunt description of a form of incest. Gordon invited the audience to join him in shouting the term at the count of three. With seemingly infantile glee, numerous people shouted away.

Gordon was duly arrested for violating Utah's obscenity statute, which makes it "unlawful for any person to willfully or knowingly sing or speak an obscene or lewd song, ballad or any other obscene or lewd words in any public place or in the presence of other persons." In response, the defendants filed suit in U.S. district court against the local prosecutor, charging that the Utah law was unconstitutional.

Last week a three-judge district court tossed out the suit. In a decision written by Chief Judge David T. Lewis of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the court upheld the constitutionality of the Utah law and refused to intervene in the prosecutor's case against Gordon. Whether or not he is convicted, the decision makes it clear that any speaker faces arrest if he flaunts obscene words in public--at least in Utah.

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