Copyright 1992 by UPI. Reposted with permission from the ClariNet
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	NEW YORK (UPI) -- The American Civil Liberties Union Wednesday named a
number of government officials and private individuals, including Oliver
North and Washington State Gov. Booth Gardner, as ``1992 Arts Censors of
the Year.''
	The watchdog organization cited those chosen as having ``shown
exceptional disregard for the First Amendment values of freedom of
speech.''
	``All of the people and groups that we've named today, and many
others like them, are trying to impose their ideological, moral and
religious standards on a very diverse population,'' said Marjorie Heins,
director of the ACLU's Arts Censorship Project.
	She noted that several of those named as arts censors ``are public
officials who have used the weight and authority of their offices to
wage campaigns against musicians, painters, sculptors and writers.''
	The others, she said, ``are private individuals and pressure groups
who have advocated censorship in an effort to impose their morality and
cultural tastes on the rest of society.''
	Those listed were.
	-- Anne-Imelda Radice, acting chairwoman of the National Endowment for
the Arts, ``who stated in testimony before Congress that she would veto
any grants for sexually explicit art or other projects that deal with
'difficult subject matter.'''
	-- The Duval County, Fla., public school district, ``which has
censored more than 60 books over the years, and which, this past year,
purged the county's school libraries of titles by Stephen King and
African-American poet Nikki Giovani, not to mention the classic fairy
tale 'Snow White' banned because of 'graphic violence.'''
	-- Omaha, Neb., City Councilman Steve Exon, and members of Omaha for
Decency, a private organization, ``who together organized a private
sting operation resulting in prosecutions against four local record
stores for selling 2 Live Crew's 'Sports Weekend' album to teenagers.''
	-- The Maryland State Legislature's Frederick County delegation, which
reversed its plans to seek $500,000 in state funding for a local arts
center ``after the museum displayed a satiric, anti-Persian Gulf War
painting.''
	-- The Washington State Legislature and Gov. Booth Gardner, who passed
a law imposing a mandatory labeling sytem, with criminal penalties, for
musical recordings deemed ``erotic'' by a state court.
	-- Former Marine colonel Oliver North and Florida attorney Jack
Thompson, ``who led a campaign of harassment against musicians and
record companies over Ice-T's song 'Cop Killer,' and other music with
messages they dislike.''
	-- Legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin, ``for
drafting and advocating legislation that would allow lawsuits to ban
sexually oriented entertainment, and to allow victims of sexual crimes
to collect damages from the producers and distributors of such
entertainment.''
	-- The Rev. Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, 
``for a lifetime of disservice to the fundamental values of the Bill of
Rights in his pursuit of one overarching goal: the restructuring of
American law to reflect his own moral code.''