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Several forms of censorship used by guards at the Oregon Women's Correctional Center and the Oregon State Penitentiary were ruled unconstitutional in a federal court here recently.
Advocates of prisoners' rights maintain that gay prisoners will benefit the most from the decision, which was made by U.S. District Judge Owen Panner on March 22.
Lesbian and gay male publications or books which are not "sexually explicit" must no longer be kept from prisoners, according to the agreement between state prison officials and attorneys from the Oregon American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit.
The agreement also mandates that prison officials confiscate all sexually explicit material, regardless of whether it is meant to appeal to homosexuals or heterosexuals.
Until now, sexually explicit publications intended for heterosexual men - everything from Hustler to the less well known s/m magazine, The Bondage Annual - have been ushered in, while the newsletter of the Metropolitan Community Church, GCN, RFD, the classified pages of the Advocate, and other lesbian or gay publications were confiscated, without notice to the subscriber or the sender.
Some sections of Panner's five-page decision which related to censorship of lesbian and gay male material read as follows: 'The practice of confiscating materials relating to homosexual conduct or lifestyles, other than those materials explicitly describing or graphically depicting homosexual conduct, violates plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
"Defendants may constitutionally confiscate materials that depict homosexual conduct only if similar heterosexual material is also confiscated.
"Any practice of 'blacklisting' certain publications without a review of each individual issue as it is received violates plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
"The preferential protection from censorship under the rule governing inmate mail accorded publications 'with a large national circulation which are openly sold on newsstands' violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of both sender and inmate plaintiffs."
ACLU...