Porn tax may draw legislative scrutiny (Kansas)

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

The battle over sexually explicit entertainment, already well under way in Wichita, appears headed for the state Capitol in the coming months.

Pornography opponents took their case Tuesday to a legislative panel, urging that lawmakers tax sales of explicit materials. The tax committee will decide next month whether to recommend a tax to the full Legislature, which convenes in January.

A lawyer representing three Wichita video stores, however, warned that the tax likely would not survive a legal challenge alleging violation of the constitutional right to free speech and equal protection under the law.

The 10 percent sales tax is being pushed as a grand jury in Wichita is examining whether porn shops violate the community's obscenity standards.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/12936978.htm

also in related obscenity news, I got emailed a link to a site set up about the Chris Wilson / nowthatsfuckedup.com case:

http://www.freechris.org/

[mongo]

1. You can't tax one genre of entertainment and not another

That is a tax based on the content of speech.

It will never pass constitutional muster - although that doesn't mean very much to the Kansas legislature.