Gays Hold ‘Sex-In’ as Ohio Trial of Art Museum, Director Opens

Gay activists held a “sex-in” outside the county courthouse today as an art museum and its director went on trial on obscenity charges for displaying photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

The Contemporary Arts Center and director Dennis Barrie were indicted in April on charges of pandering obscenity and child pornography for showing the photographs.

The trial, expected to last 10 days, involves seven of the 175 photos displayed at the gallery last spring. Five photos are of men engaged in homosexual acts and two are of children with their genitals displayed.

Outside the courthouse, protesters marched, chanted and briefly blocked traffic by lying in the street and simulating sex acts “for everybody’s enjoyment and outrage,” said Scott MacLarty, a member of the Gay and Lesbian March Activists.

“We believe that (the indictments are) motivated by homophobia,” he said, explaining the turnout by about 300 homosexuals and others opposed to what they said is censorship.

Cincinnati Police Capt. Joe Koch said officers decided against making arrests because “the crowd moved along.”

Inside the courtroom, the defense was dealt a setback as Municipal Judge David Albanese overruled a motion to have a mistrial declared.

Defense lawyer Louis Sirkin said the prospective jurors had been contaminated by the flavor of questions posed by Prosecutor Frank Prouty, who frequently asked whether the potential jurors agreed or disagreed with laws on child pornography.