Print Zines and Customs

The mailing of print zines to other countries was an expensive and often complicated process, made even more so by issues Customs and zine content. 
Zines most often targeted by Customs were ones which had content deemed offensive or pornographic, specifically those which contained same sex material. 
==Slash as Obscenity==
Because of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which states that Congress can make no law abridging freedoms of speech or press, there is no federal obscenity law in the United States. In each state, obscenity is determined by applying what the "average person" for that arearead: middle-class, Christian and heterosexual, e.g. the National Legion of Decency., applying "community standards" deems obscene or not, and whether or not the work contains sufficient "artistic merit". This extremely subjective standard is called the Miller test after the author Henry Miller, whose book Tropic of Cancer was ruled not obscene after considerable scrutiny in Miller vs. State of California 1973.
Zine publishers were thus bound by the laws of their states and communities as to whether or not they could accept slash. Any and all fiction depicting homosexual relations at that time was generally considered obscene by the aforesaid community standards, even if non-explicit. In many places, it could be construed as using the mails to distribute obscenity or pornography, leading to a big court case which no fan publisher had the money to defend in court. 
It is difficult to convey to modern readers just how controversial this all was at the time. At the time of the Stonewall Riots of 1969 which sparked the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, being homosexual was illegal in most states. Before the sodomy laws were repealed, state by stateLawrence vs. Texas explains more about the legal situation for gay people at that time., most gay people, especially young people, lived in fear of discovery. Being gay was legal grounds for imprisonment and/or commitment to insane asylums. Groups such as the Mattachine Society had to be extremely discreet and nearly everything was published anonymously. It is unknown whether slash fan fiction made any sort of impression or had any influence on public opinion in favor of normalizing homosexuality.Has Slash Made The World Better For Gay Men? by Brent Hartinger (The Back Lot, August 11, 2010)For a summary of just how far things have come as of 2012, see Alex Ross, Love on the March.See also I Felt Like I Grew Up As A Criminal, Atlantic Monthly, June 28, 2013.The excellent film Before Stonewall is one of the best introductions to how gay people were seen in former times and how the gay community evolved.
From Bill Hupe, the editor of Mi-Anime in late 1988: 
 
==Some Specific Examples==
Most copies of the Kirk/Spock zine, The Price and The Prize (1981), mailed to addresses in the U.K. were seized by Customs because of the explicit content. There were some reports that a disgruntled Star Trek fan, disapproving of slash, alerted UK customs to be on the lookout for packages with the publisher's return address.Morgan Dawn personal notes, based on conversations with K/S fans in the 1990s. A friend of Newton's explains that:
From A 2007 Interview with Valerie Piacentini: 
The seizure did not go unnoticed. In a 1981 issue of the UK letterzine STAG the editors wrote: 
The editors of STAG added in that same 1981 issue: 
Luckily, this was the only blanket seizure of K/S zines in the UK, although fans reported in various UK letterzines for many years thereafter that their packages had been opened and, on occasion, a few individual zines would be confiscated. Future shipments of the Price and the Prize were mailed from a different location.
A fan in 2016 remembers this incidence, and others:
==References==
Category:Zines