Gay books for ‘Smith’

Press, 1 September 1980, Page 4

Gay books for ‘Smith’

PA Wellington Patricia Bartlett, the morals campaigner, seems to have been caught in a Catch 22-type situation over the importing of five homosexual books. Miss Bartlett saw the books — entitled “Split the Sky,” “Getting the Shaft,” “Men of the Bluegrass,” “A Camp in the Woods,” and “A Shot in the Corral” — advertised in a New Zealand homosexual magazine.

She ordered a copy of each from the Sydney distributor to find out. if they were pornographic. “I used the noni de plume J. Smith so they would not put me on their mailing list and send me pornography till kingdom come,” Miss Bartlett said yesterday. “When the books arrived I only had to read the first five lines to know they were absolute filth.” Miss Bartlett said she

took the books to the police. The catch came when she found she had to dispute their seizing so they would not be destroyed without going before the Indecent Publications Tribunal.

“The only way to get the tribunal to classify them was for me to question forfeiture — after I had been the one who handed them over in the first place.”

So Miss Bartlett filled out a non-forfeiture form.

When the hearing date was set for July 22, Miss Bartlett was' in Canada. She was still there when the hearing was held so she had no chance to make submissions.

Last week the tribunal released its decision. The books, it said were “explicit . . . had a tendency to corrupt . . . coarse and obscene . . . lurid” — unquestionably indecent, by unanimous vote. Miss Bartlett said she was pleased with the result because the magazine

would have to drop the advertisement.

“They have been printing the ad lor three years — I hate to think how many people have been buying those books.”

In its written decision, the tribunal named Miss Bartlett and said it was “interested” in the fact that she used a false name, then disputed forfeiture of what was clearly indecent.

Miss Bartlett said she w’as angered by the publication of her name because people reading the decision could get the wrong impression of her.

Companies which commercially imported books that went before the tribunal, rarely had their names published, she said. “Here I am protecting the public good and I get my name mentioned. The others are trying to make money from books like these and they get Government protection,” said Miss Bartlett.