Court Opinion

ID: 9582944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:33:03.213018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:46.015519
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
The record reflects that the defense expert referred to in Division 3 was a sex expert in pornotherapy, a member of The American Association of Sex Counselors, certified by the State of Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation and the Department of Family and Children Services, a licensed clinical psychotherapist on the staff of a psychiatric hospital, a lecturer at Emory University, has worked with the Atlanta Public School System and has done juvenile counseling. He testified: "Although I have worked with some unusual cases of children, five year olds — excessive masturbation, those kinds of things,” it appears that most of his work in the sexuality problem area was with adults "having trouble relating to each other.” He testified generally that the two magazines under consideration, "Raw Passion” and "Cock Hungry,” the rubber penis extensions, plastic vaginas, battery run vibrators, "french ticklers,” explicit magazine photograph closeups of group sex in differing positions were educational, beneficial and contain scientific value for the average woman and man. He felt that the average person would not view this material exclusively or primarily with prurient interest, and that the two magazines and materials do have scientific value. He further stated that there is a strong opinion that repressed sexuality can lead to violent outpourings "going on to violent crime” if this type material and magazines were not available for use. The reverse of this was discussed, but this latter argument was not considered in the majority view or minority view of "The President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography” wherein the Congress of the United States had expressed "the traffic in obscenity and pornography is a matter of *42national concern.”
The jury, a cross section of average citizens, could have rejected and chose to disbelieve the testimony of the expert witness as to close up photographs of group sex containing scientific value for the average woman or man and may have chosen to "use their own common sense as intelligent human beings. . .” Feldschneider v. State, 127 Ga. App. 745, 746 (195 SE2d 184), or they may have decided the "right of privacy” to control their own body politic of community standards superseded the First Amendment rights of defendant, particularly since obscenity is not protected by First Amendment freedoms. Compare Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179.