Community Slams Porn Store's Door
by Jason Collum
March 4, 2004
(AgapePress) - Selling allegedly obscene material is a felony in Louisiana, and one parish has gone on record saying smut is not welcome within its borders.A jury in Ruston, Louisiana, found Dan Sasha Birman, owner and operator of Fantasy Video in Ruston, guilty of violating state obscenity laws. Birman was convicted of selling sexually explicit material to undercover state troopers in April 2003.
Birman, 23, avoided jail time by agreeing to seven stipulations set forth in court. Among them were immediately closing Fantasy Video and agreeing to stay out of the porn business.
Lincoln District Attorney Bob Levy said the jury "set the community standard where we believed it should have been all along -- that this community does not accept hard-core graphic pornography of the type sold by the defendant."
During the trial, jurors were shown two extremely explicit hardcore videos sold to the troopers. Many jurors either turned their eyes away, bowed their heads or closed their eyes during the most explicit scenes.
"Absolutely sickening. It made me sick to my stomach," said 19-year-old Louisiana Tech University student Lindsi Liles, who sat in on the proceedings to observe how a trial is run. "I wasn't surprised that you could buy things like that at an adult video store, but I was surprised at how graphic and close up the scenes were. To me, it's definitely obscene; it crosses the line."
The store opened in Ruston in February 2003. Birman also owned a similar store in Delhi, Louisiana, and district attorneys there may seek to have the Delhi store closed, too.
Ruston resident Keith Boydstun told AFA Journal he was elated to see the store closed. "There were a lot of prayers and a prayer walk to defeat this porn shop," Boydstun wrote. "We got the state police, sheriff's office and our D.A. [Levy] involved to enforce our local decency laws. [It just goes to show] what a community can do to battle the pornography issue plaguing our nation."
Jason Collum, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a staff writer for AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association. This article appeared in the March 2004 issue.
