Court Suit Over Playboy for Blind

There really are readers of Playboy magazine who are only interested in the articles.

“The Braille edition of Playboy is distinctly different,” said blind attorney Oral O. Miller, executive director of the American Council of the Blind.

“It has,” Miller said, “no pictures, no centerfolds, no cartoons and no advertisements.

“Many sighted people find that a rather tame publication.”

Striking Back

Although readers of the Braille edition of Playboy are perhaps the only subscribers who can unquestionably assert the familiar claim of not caring about the nude photographs, Congress passed an amendment last summer that halted the Library of Congress’ publishing of the only Braille copies of Playboy. The amendment was introduced by Rep. Chalmers Wylie (R-Ohio), who said the magazine “assails traditional moral values” and “peddles licit and illicit sex.”

Miller and other blind readers of Playboy struck back here this week, filing a suit in U.S. District Court seeking to overturn the ban.

“It’s blatant, paternalistic censorship,” Miller said at a press conference in the Capitol.

Miller was flanked by other plaintiffs, who included two other blind individuals, as well as the American Council for the Blind, the Blinded Veterans Assn., Playboy Enterprises Inc. and the American Library Assn. Also at the packed press conference were California Reps. Jerry Lewis (R-San Bernardino) and Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), who will file “friend of the court” briefs in support of the plaintiffs.

One of the blind plaintiffs, 35-year-old Deborah Kendrick, said that she does find some of the articles “offensive to women” and exercises her “personal freedom not to read those segments.”

Kendrick, a free-lance writer and poet, said reading Playboy was essential to furthering her career.

“It is my only access to contemporary short fiction and writing styles,” she said. “Apparently there are a number of stereotypes about the sort of man who reads Playboy.

“I don’t know much about the man who reads Playboy, but I do know what kind of woman reads Playboy. I’m a mother of two children, a Girl Scout leader, a member of the PTA and active in the Catholic Church. I’m also a woman who takes her work seriously.”

Playboy is one of 36 Braille publications that the Library of Congress makes available to blind readers across the country, and it is one of the most popular.

Library of Congress figures from last October, the last month Playboy was printed in Braille, found it to be the sixth most popular publication with blind readers, behind (1) the Ladies Home Journal, (2) the Braille Mirror, (3) New York Times Weekly, (4) Better Homes and Gardens and (5) Braille Variety News.

Playboy had been available for the last 15 years, and was in the top seven every year. There were 1,000 blind subscribers, and many more who borrowed the Braille editions from libraries.

The Library of Congress program, which is federally funded, is the nation’s only source of mainstream magazines translated into Braille, according to the American Council of the Blind.

Burton Joseph, the attorney handling the case for Playboy, said it had not been discussed whether Playboy itself would publish a Braille edition to fill the gap, at a cost of about $90 for one yearly subscription for one person.

“That would be a simple thing, but that absolutely sidesteps the problem,” Joseph said. “They have a right to get it through the Library of Congress.”

Because regular issues of Playboy will continue to be available to sighted people through the Library of Congress, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Bruce J. Ennis, called the banning of Braille Playboy “an unusually direct, blatant and cruel form of discrimination against the blind.”

The amendment deleting the $103,000 necessary to publish the Braille Playboys passed, 216-193.

“It seems to me,” Lewis said, “that Congress is beginning to make decisions about what is good for people to read. It’s the worst kind of censorship I’ve seen in recent years.”

Fazio said that members of Congress jumped on the bandwagon because it was the kind of vote that election opponents would use for quick, negative campaign blurbs, claiming the incumbent had wasted taxpayer money on Braille printings of a sex magazine.

“Too many of my colleagues took an out on this,” Fazio said. “Many are somewhat ashamed.”

The suit is filed against Daniel Boorstin, the librarian of Congress, who, ironically, is sympathetic to the plaintiffs. Although he would not comment last week, because of the pending litigation, at the time Congress passed the amendment, he expressed “profound regret” at the turn of events.

“The next step,” Boorstin said last July, “might be to deny funds to the Library of Congress for the purchase of books which the House deems inappropriate, subversive or unacceptable to a majority of the House. Censorship has no place in a free society.”

The suit alleges that the amendment was introduced and debated while there were fewer than 218 House members (a quorum) present, that a quorum was filled after a five-minute recess and that members then voted on the amendment without knowing what it was.

The suit comes at a time when Playboy’s popularity is dwindling. Subscriptions have fallen to just over four million, down from more than seven million in 1972.