Smutty Literature Study Launched by Senators
N.A.
Oklahoma City, March 1 [1961] –
The state Senate bravely stepped forth into the field of indecent literature Wednesday, and everyone was against it.
Afterwards, the special Senate investigating committee, headed by Sen. Ray Fine, Gore, held its first meeting to study the distribution and effects of obscene literature being distributed in Oklahoma.
Sen. Gene Stipe, McAlester, opened the oratory with an attack on certain magazines appearing on news stands. He held aloft two publications featuring semi-nude women. There were numerous requests from interested senators to study the marterial more closely.
The copies found their way to the Senate press table, where newsmen observed them studiously before some research-minded senators picked them up for their own investigation.
Big Racket, Stipe Says
Sen. Buck Cartwright, Wewoka, asked Stipe if he would make available to each member of the Senate copies of his exhibit.
Stipe said he had bought the copies with his own money and the supply was limited but he would put Cartwright on the waiting list.
Stipe said indecent magazines were being sold in grocery stores, drug stores, motels and other places of business.
“I am sure there is no one in the august body who will be corrupted or led astray by this literature,” he said, “but there are countless cases coming before the juvenile courts, and youth workers say much of this is directly attributable to this literature.”
“Smut has got to be one of the biggest rackets in teh whole country,” Stipe said.
Teachers Accused
Tom Hammer, who said he was representing the Harding High School PTA, was the first witness to appear before Fine’s committee.
He charged that obscene material was being distributed by public school teachers in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
He said a sex film was hown to a “mixed class” at Oklahoma City’s Classen High Scholl.
In Tulsa, he said an English teacher required her students to [read Catcher in the Rye]…