Court Opinion

ID: 9665720
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:55:32.779972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:18.172893
License: Public Domain

ODOM, Judge
(concurring).
Although I concur in the disposition made by the majority, I am unable to accept their reasoning in the following particulars.
The majority opinion, in addressing Article 527, V.A.P.C., purports to “interpret and restrict by judicial construction” the term “sexual matters” as used therein. What have the majority done with Article 8, V.A.P.C., jn the process ? That statute, some may still recall, provided that terms not specially defined are to be given their ordinary meaning, as understood in common language. Can the majority really mean that “sexual matters,” as commonly understood, means precisely, neither more nor less than, ultimate sexual acts, masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals? Although some may not regard excretory functions as sexual matters, the majority of this Court and the Supreme Court (Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607) do hold them in such regard; and, this Court so proposed for purposes of statutory interpretation in its unanimous opinion of February 13, 1974. On the other hand, unless the majority are of the opinion that “a woman mouthing the penis of a horse” (Hamling v. United States, _ U.S. _, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974)) is an ultimate sexual act (and perhaps they are of that opinion), then I presume they would conclude its representation could not be prohibited under Article 527. But if this be an ultimate sexual act, I ask: Is a woman with a horse less ultimate than two horses? Or: Are the breeding stables in Texas henceforth to be rated X?
Regarding the narrowness of the majority’s construction of Article 527, it is clear that the examples taken from Miller are precisely that: examples. Although in Hamling v. United States, supra, it was stated “ . . . the particular descriptions there contained [in Miller] were not intended to be exhaustive,” the majority insist upon holding that if not exhaustive of the constitutional limits, they are at least exhaustive of the limits of “sexual matters” in Article 527. If the Legislature can prohibit more than the specific exam-*449pies of Miller (as it clearly can), and if the term “sexual matters” as commonly understood includes more than the specific examples of Miller (as it clearly does), then how can this Court say “sexual matters” in Article 527 means no more than the examples of Miller and call it statutory interpretation and construction? To so limit the statute to less than what it on its face includes, to less than what was clearly intended, and to less than what the Supreme Court says is constitutionally permissible, is not statutory interpretation and construction; it is judicial legislation.1
I remain convinced that the construction given to Article 527, and specifically to the term “sexual matters,” in the previously unanimous opinion of this Court rendered February 13, 1974, is correct.
I cannot agree with the majority’s erroneous decision to draft a new obscenity statute.
ROBERTS, J., joins in this opinion.

. As long as the majority are busying themselves with redrafting the statute, why do they not also change the requirement that the material be utterly without redeeming soeial value to the new standard of lacking serious literary, artistic, political and scientific value?