A MESSAGE FROM THE PUBLISHER (Manscape 2: Spring 1986)

I want to alert you to the ease with which you’ve purchased this magazine, to the freedom you had to choose this among other magazines on sale at your local magazine distributor’s, to your ability to take for granted that you could make the choice and the purchase. Savor the moment; it appears to be one that might disappear.

There is a well-thought-out, highly developed plan among a vocal minority in this country to take that choice away from you. That group (the Moral Majority is what they call themselves) believes it knows what is best for you to read, basing its belief on the opinion that only they can interpret God’s word. This handful of people, not 10% of our population, would determine the right to read of the remaining 90% or so of the population of the United States. And that 90% — believing the MM to be “religious fanatics” unworthy of being taken seriously — is allowing it to happen! How? By passively watching their antics in the newspapers and on television, by deriding them among themselves, by assuming that so ridiculously-ranting a group can hardly be worth worrying about.

Wrong! Any group, regardless of size — with the money and plan necessary — can effect change in the lives of the society in which it exists if it shouts long enough and loud enough. And that is what the MM is doing, via mailing campaigns, paid ads, church sermons, marches, picketing, and all the other methods we see practiced daily. If you don’t believe what we’re saying, think back to Prohibition — pushed along and through legislation by a handful of people who believed that drinking was harmful and that people who drank needed to be “saved from themselves.” It doesn’t matter whether drinking is harmful or not; that isn’t the point. It does matter that a few well-meaning people were able to make that decision and see it into law because it was something in which they believed. It matters that a handful of people were able to make a decision that affected the lives of millions of people.

The same thing is happening with smoking; with education; with libraries (have you seen the list of books being pulled from libraries so that youngsters won’t be tainted by their contents? Huckleberry Finn is among them, as are the Mother Goose books).

And the same thing is happening with magazines that contain sexually explicit materials. With the magazine you now hold in your hand, among others. If this group of fanatics is allowed to get away with removal of all sexually oriented magazines and books from newsstands and bookstores, they will move on from there to other periodicals they consider ill-advised for the general public to have. Perhaps they’ll decide certain politically oriented publications contain messages they don’t feel “safe” for the rest of us to read . . . remember Nazi Germany? Think how the Nazi party got started there. Perhaps they’ll decide that certain religious publications are harmful for general consumption; not all religious people agree on the ways in which religious ideas should be expressed . . . nor on the ideas themselves.

We can all do something about this problem, and we don’t need money nor a tight, well-knit organization in which to function. All we need is a piece of paper, an envelope, and a 22¢ stamp. We can write to our congressman, to our senator, to our president, or any other government representative in a position to pass our opinions on to those who govern our nation. Simply put, all our letters need say is that we don’t agree with censorship of our reading/buying habits, that we don’t agree with the Moral Majority on censorship, that we do believe in the First Amendment in which freedom of the press is very clearly defined.

Write, dear friends. Write at least one letter expressing your desire to continue enjoying the freedom to select your own reading materials.

JACKIE LEWIS

MANSCAPE 2 PUBLISHER