Hightower recounts the story of longtime activist John Henry Faulk’s appearance at a community meeting about an X-rated movie theater on South Congress Avenue in Austin. Featuring the brilliant and much-missed Molly Ivins!
Every few decades, there’s an outburst somewhere in America of puritanical nannyism by some group of religious zealots out to impose their uptight sexual morality on everyone.
It happened to my town of Austin in the 1980s, when we were suddenly bedeviled by “Citizens Against Pornography,” led by a Pecksniffian preacher, Reverend Mark Weaver, who felt godsent to banish “dirty” sexual material from our hamlet of freethinkers. The righteous reverend attended a city hearing where he demanded the closing of a movie theater on South Congress Avenue that did indeed show X-rated material.
As reported by the great journalist and Texas raconteur, Molly Ivins, the sermonizer asserted that a neighborhood woman had witnessed a movie patron proceed from the 5-o’clock show to the alley out back where, right then and there, he masturbated. See! Squawked the preacher, viewing such stuff is causing depraved behavior in our town. It must be banned!
In response, an elderly gentleman who happened to have been born and raised on the very street where this theater of depravity now stood, shuffled to the podium. He was John Henry Faulk, a civil libertarian of national renown who had been a widely popular television humorist in the 1950s – until Joe McCarthy and his Red-Scare thugs got him banned from TV. But Faulk had fought back and ultimately won an historic legal victory against the political Beelzebub himself, so he was more than match for the squawking preacher.
As Molly recounted the moment, our old friend Johnny did not lapse into a lecture on Constitutional law or assail pious busybodies. Instead, with his courtly Southern drawl and a twinkle in his one good eye, Faulk simply reminded everyone present that “there was a lot of masturbation in South Austin before there was ever a pornography theater there.”
Laughter filled the room, heads nodded… case dismissed. The First Amendment was saved for another day, without even having to mention it.
Enjoyed this post? Please consider sharing with friends and on social media!
History Morsel: The Day Masturbation Saved the First Amendment in Texas