Publisher Sees No Harm In Sex Books, Daily Record (Article, December 1952)
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Publisher Sees No Harm In Sex Books
WASHINGTON AP-- A publisher told House investigators today he saw "nothing wrong" in allowing high school youths to read a pocket-size book containing passages dealing with homosexuality. Ralph Daigh, vice president and editorial director of Fawcett Publications, Inc., made the statement. He was the first witness before a special House committee investigating "current pornographic materials."
Against protests of committee members, Daigh defended his firm's publication of "Woman's Barracks." a pocket-size book depicting life of a woman soldier in the French army.
Daigh said it was a true story based on a diary and more than 1,000,000 copies have been sold. Typewritten extracts of some passages were distributed among reporters, but were not read into the record.
The committee charged in opening the hearing that "pocket-size books to a great extent have deteriorated during the past decade into dissemination of artful appeals to sensuality, immorality, filth, perversion and degeneracy."
Daigh said "Woman's Barracks" was "a real contribution in human experience" and was written sincerely.
In reply to a question from Rep. Reva Beck Bosone D-Utah, he said he has a 13-year-old daughter and has no objection to her reading any of the books published by his firm.
"She is a normal girl," with "very few inhibitions," he said. Of "cheese cake" magazines, the committee said the weight of evidence is "not so much against nudity per se as against those avaricious publishers who present their subjects in toros abnormally exaggerated as to their secondary sexual attributes, and in suggestive, even lascivious poses."
The statement said that there are 70,000,000 American readers of comic books, giving the industry a circulation surpassing all books, magazines and periodicals combined and exceeded only by that of daily newspapers.
