AFA DEMONSTRATES OVER PRONO VIDEO TAPES

JACKSON -- Members of the American Family Association fired another shot Monday over the county prosecuting attorney's decision not to prosecute a local video store that rents pornographic tapes.

An officer of the association's Cape Girardeau County chapter coordinated a one-hour picket at the Cape Girardeau County Courthouse that criticized the prosecutor, Morley Swingle, though not by name. The prosecuting attorney's office is in the courthouse.

About 20 people walked or stood around the courthouse square with black-lettered white signs, showing them to passers-by in vehicles and on foot. Local chapter members say they want to rid the county of pornographic material.

The signs, including several held by children, carried remarks such as "County prosecutor, `Talk to Us,'" "Missouri Law: Porn is illegal," and "County prosecutor, Do your job." The signs were carried by picketers from Fredericktown, Cape Girardeau, Jackson, and Madison and Bollinger counties, said association members.

After the demonstration, the association officer, Donna Miller of Cape Girardeau, said she believed she had achieved "recognition, my chance to tell my side of the story."

Earlier this year Miller had her husband rent what she says was a pornographic video tape from Broadway Video, 510 Broadway. She then filed a complaint with Cape Girardeau police.

Kenny Williams of St. Marys, president of the association's Ste. Genevieve chapter, traveled to Jackson to assist with the picket at the bidding of Miller.

Association members, he said, were trying to get across two points: that they aren't going to give up their quest to rid the county of pornography and to alert the public that they believe Swingle isn't doing his job as county prosecutor. If need be, Williams said, association members will carry out the quest until Swingle comes up for re-election.

"If someone runs who will do the job, I'm confident he (Swingle) will be voted out," said Williams, who works in the excavation business and says he has organized successful efforts in four Southeast Missouri counties to rid them of pornographic tapes. Swingle would be up for re-election in 1994.

Williams and Miller criticized Swingle in June after he surveyed some county residents to determine contemporary community standards about pornography. The survey found that 75 percent of 139 respondents did not want a video store owner prosecuted for renting to an adult a sexually explicit video tape that showed a man and woman having sex.

Both Williams and Miller charged that Swingle had slanted the survey. Also, they contended community standards need to be determined by a county jury hearing a pornography case, and have vowed to try to take a case to court. The survey respondents had just finished sitting on a county jury panel.

Swingle said Monday's picket made no difference to him.

"I'm not going to be pressured by any group of people to file a charge that isn't merited," said the prosecutor. "I'm following the law."

One factor used under Missouri law to define what is obscene is contemporary community standards, he said.

The police officer who signed Miller's complaint wrote that Miller stated that she and her husband had become addicted to pornographic movies and had to watch them to have sex. Miller has consistently denied saying she had become addicted to pornography.

Clint McCormack, 77, of Bollinger County, stood with a sign facing Main Street Monday. McCormack said he is a retired schoolteacher and a real estate broker in Fredericktown who serves as president of the American Family Association's Madison County chapter.

He believes, he said, that there is a "direct correlation between pornography, child molestation and sex crimes." Most pornography is produced by organized crime, he contended.

Association members, he said, just want pornography out of the community.

"We don't want to hurt anybody's business; we don't want to destroy anything but the pornography," he said.

But Wayne McDowell of Oak Ridge said Monday he thought people had gone far enough in telling others what is moral. McDowell and a friend were driving to Cape Girardeau when they saw the picket and stopped along Main Street.

People should have a choice, he said. "But it's like the Bible says, `Who casts the first stone?' Who's the one to say this is good for you and this isn't?

"If not enough people don't get out and speak their minds, the ones who do will rule," he said.