I spent the weekend in Indianapolis at the 50th annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. Mostly it was a very excellent time, with a very good reception for our work. But one thing happened that left me disturbed.

Many of the people who I spoke with were professors who taught sexually or researched aspects of sexuality in a university setting, and several of them were interested in our films, either for use in their classrooms, or in their experiments. This included a professor from an Oklahoma university, who himself was at the conference to present a paper on BDSM.

“I’d really love to use your films in my class, but penetration is illegal in Oklahoma.”

This is the second time in a month that I’ve heard this.

The first time was last month at a trade-show in Las Vegas. A woman who owns a lingerie shop was at our booth, delighted by what she saw.

“Do your films have penetration?” she asked.

“Of course they do. Our films are about sex.”

“Oh, then I can’t carry them. Penetration is illegal in Oklahoma. If you stick your tongue in someone’s ear and it’s sexual, it’s illegal in Oklahoma.”

Of course this is nonsense. Legislators in Oklahoma can no more outlaw the photographic depiction of sexual penetration than they can outlaw the photographic depiction of blue shirts.

Yet apparently they have.

There is variety of expression not seen as worthy of First Amendment protection – obscenity. Throughout the Twentieth Century, what is and is not obscenity has been the subject of a number of Supreme Court decisions, the last being the 1973 case of Miller v. California. With regard to what sort of sexually explicit expression is not protected by the First Amendment, Miller v. California is the law of the land, and defines obscenity by a three-pronged test.

A work is considered obscene, and therefore may be suppressed by the government if:

The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

And

The work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.

And

The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.

What that means is that if a jury decides the answer to any one of these three questions is “no”, then the work is not obscene, and if it’s not obscene than the state of Oklahoma has no power to suppress the distribution of the work.

In theory.

In practice, the threat of an obscenity prosecution is enough to prevent work from being seen, even films recently described as, “Perhaps the most cinematic and pro-social depictions of sexual behavior ever produced.” (You gotta love how sex scientists talk!)

The simple fact is that the Oklahoma professor I talked to this weekend is afraid that if he uses our films in his classroom, he’ll go to jail. The Oklahoma shopkeeper we talked to is afraid that if she offers our films to her customers she’ll go to jail. And that fear is enough to keep people from seeing our films in the Sooner State.