Va. court dismisses obscenity case against LGBTQ books
The Circuit Court for the City of Virginia Beach has rejected two petitions arguing that two LGBTQ-themed books were obscene and illegal to sell or lend in the state of Virginia.
In its ruling the court found that the Virginia state statute pursuant to which the petitions were filed violated First Amendment free speech rights and the constitutional right to due process.
Likewise, the court vacated a lower court determination of probable cause for obscenity. The proceedings were initiated pursuant to Virginia Code § 18.2-384 — a law that has not been used for decades, but which purports to allow any individual to file a petition claiming that any book is obscene.
Under the statute, a book could have been deemed obscene and its distribution could have been made criminal without any notice — much less an opportunity to be heard on the issue — to the countless bookstores, book lenders and other distributors who would have been governed by the result.
