when I was about 12 years old (and a voracious reader - completely eclectic and trying out everything I could get my hands on), I visited my aunt, uncle and cousins in your approximate neck of the woods (Sunnyvale). I happened on a stack of magazines that I judged to have politically conservative content.

[A digression: The reason a 12 year old might judge the political content was because of my father's acute paranoia about the John Birch Society, Republicans, and the police. My uncle was known to be a conservative (and quite rational, compared to my father). Relations in the family were very strained. Anyhow, I grew up with quite an early political education. I recall the time I went to the polls when most of the family was voting for Kennedy. I was pretty excited about the election and about Kennedy. When I saw somebody I knew (don't remember who) outside the polling place I yelled "Kennedy!". My dad about had a stroke right there that I'd announce a liberal family preferance to all the spys who were listening and taking notes. He was yelling and screaming all night. I was about 6-7 years old at the time.]

So I found this stack of magazines and there was an article about a Matt Helm movie poster. The poster had Dean Martin riding the barrel of a giant gun with a caption that said, "The city of [the name of a city I don't remember] shoots the works!" The piece was an indictment of how immoral and shameful the poster was. It went on to interpret what the poster meant in imaginative graphic detail. And when I say detail, I mean they described what would happen to one particular woman should the city decide to "shoot the works" upon her person. I would not repeat what I recall of that description here. I was shocked and disgusted and a little angry.

I came away from it with a moral guideline to apply in cases like this that I've honed over the years: The real filth is the shit that people publish in an attempt to make us think that sex is something we should feel profound shame about.