Many Resist Pastor’s Move to Close ‘Dirty Drive-in’ : Alabama Town Divided on Porn Theater

When the Rev. Gary Fagan packed up his Bible and left Boston nearly three years ago for the pastorate at Elkdale Baptist Church here, he was happy to shake the dust of Yankeedom from his shoes.

“I was looking forward to being back in the South,” said the 45-year-old minister, a Mississippian by birth and upbringing. “I was looking forward to rearing my family with the traditional kind of values that we were accustomed to.”

Selma seemed ideal for that. Although it is known as the scene of a bloody civil rights battle 20 years ago, it is at heart a peaceful, law-abiding community of 27,000 mostly God-fearing souls, set along the Alabama River in west Alabama’s rural Bible Belt.

Ministers Influential

Church spires dominate the landscape. Ministers are influential and highly respected community figures. And Sunday is still a day of rest and worship; most businesses close and bars are forbidden to sell alcohol.

But Fagan had not long settled into his new pulpit when he discovered a side of Selma that nearly sent him scurrying back to Boston. This little town--which so prides itself on its adherence to tradition that it built its new City Hall to look like a 19th-Century building--nevertheless was tolerating pornography--pornography, Fagan said, “of almost the strongest variety.”

It was bad enough that corner convenience stores displayed magazine covers with bare-breasted women within the sight of children and teen-agers. Much worse was that what is almost literally the last picture show in town--the 80 Drive-in Theater near the intersection of U.S. 80 and Alabama 14 on the outskirts of town--featured triple-X-rated films. And worse yet was that the drive-in screen could be seen from the highway.

Fagan began a crusade to rid the community of this blemish on its image. He preached against the evils of “raw pornography” to his congregation, enlisted other ministers in his cause and appealed for help from City Hall and the district attorney’s office.

Spied on Theater

He even encouraged members of Elkdale Baptist to spy on the theater and bring back any information that might provide evidence in a legal action--such as whether the theater was violating an ordinance against letting in anyone under 18.

For months, these activities were carried out mainly behind the scenes. But, a few weeks ago, an enterprising west Alabama correspondent for The Advertiser in Montgomery wrote a story that let the cat out of the bag. And Selma has not been the same since.

Few citizens seem to mind the pastor’s wanting to have stores shield the covers of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and the like.

But there is a mighty division of opinion over his efforts to shut down the 80 Drive-in Theater--or, as it is known around here, “The Dirty Drive-in.”

“I don’t know why he wants to close down the only good thing in town,” a strapping Selma High School senior said, echoing a complaint common among Selma’s men.

Local Institution

For all of its lack of redeeming social values, the theater is a local institution. It has been showing erotic films since before the triple-X rating was invented.

Persons drive from miles around to attend, despite the steep $4 admission. Many come out of curiosity; others are regulars. Married couples often go together. For teen-agers, a visit is something of a rite of passage.

“Eighty percent of my friends have been there, even though none of them is legally old enough to get in,” Anthony Anderson, a 16-year-old Selma High student, said.

A waitress at the local Holiday Inn believes that attendance at the theater should be a matter of choice. “You know what you’re getting when you go there,” she said. “If you don’t like it, don’t go.”

The theater operators contend that they are responding to an economic law. “When you are in business, you have to sell what the public demands,” said Jack Jones, a Selma resident who has been involved with the theater for 15 years and is the manager’s husband.

Dropped Family Films

So great is the demand that, four weeks ago, the theater announced that it would end its practice of showing family-oriented films early in the evening and would now devote its bill entirely to triple-X-rated movies.

Mike Freeman, 42-year-old editor of the Selma Times-Journal, supports the theater’s right to show such films--as long as it does so within the law--and believes that Fagan and his supporters among the clergy should be treating the causes of pornography rather than the symptoms.

“This whole thing’s so typical of the Deep South Bible Belt,” said Freeman, a native Alabamian. “Preachers like the Rev. Fagan think their ethics and their morals ought to be accepted by anyone.”

The drive-in has survived at least two previous attempts to put it out of business, the last in the early 1970s, when the district attorney took the owners to court on charges that the theater was a public nuisance.

The case was settled out of court under an agreement by the owners to install “blinder lights” to block the view of the screen from the highway. But the lights quickly fell into disrepair.

Growing Trend in South

Fagan believes this latest crusade will bear fruit. He’s buoyed by the growing trend in the South to put porno shops and theaters out of business. Atlanta, for example, has driven adult-oriented bookstores and peep shows virtually into extinction and is now working on adult theaters.

Similar steps have been taken in Montgomery, Alabama’s capital, just 50 miles east of Selma. And the North Carolina Legislature is considering a measure, recently approved by a House committee, to make obscenity prosecutions of adult theater and bookstore owners easier.

“I’m a little frightened by the person who would be aroused by the violent, anti-woman type of sexual expression as is in these films,” Fagan said. “I really believe that anybody with a normal sex life would not find them sexually interesting.”

Fagan’s crusade has some powerful allies--including Selma’s longtime mayor and political boss, Joe T. Smitherman. “These films are like what used to be called your old stag film, with that kind of vulgarity which is gross and perverted,” he said. “A little old lady in a Greyhound bus once fainted flat out when she got a glimpse of what they were showing.”

Under Investigation

Assistant Dist. Atty. Jim Sullivan said that his office is doing “everything in our power” to investigate the theater. “And if the law has been broken,” he said, “we’re going to ask that the law be enforced.”

Fagan said that, if legal steps fail, he may have to take a cue from the civil rights movement and start staging protests at the theater--shining flashlights into people’s eyes as they drive in and taking down license numbers.

“Jesus says no one goes to war without considering what it will take to win,” he said. “If we can’t prevail on this issue, the church has no voice in this community on any other moral issue and admits a level of hypocrisy that would be untenable.”