Missouri [Kansas City Star]- Phil Cosby is obsessed with sex — though not in the way you might think.
Since retiring from the Army four years ago, the 56-year-old Cosby has a new career. He’s point man in a national campaign against pornography, and — lucky us — Kansas City is to be his model for the nation.
“This is the test bed,” he told me Thursday. “This is my forte. This is what I do.”
Two days before we spoke, three Johnson County businesses were indicted on obscenity charges by a grand jury that would not have existed were it not for Cosby’s efforts.
It wasn’t the first time. Last month, a Wyandotte County grand jury brought indictments against a couple of convenience stores for selling dirty magazines, among other things.
Cosby led the petition drive to form that grand jury, too.
Same with the grand juries that investigated porn in other Kansas cities these last couple of years. Always, Cosby’s goal was to have charges brought against businesses thought to be in violation of state obscenity laws.
The result of his grassroots work was a job offer from the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families.
“They said, ‘Phil, if you can duplicate in a metro area what you’ve done in smaller metro areas, then we’ll move that into metro areas across the country.’ ”
So a year and a half ago, Cosby became executive director of the Christian group’s new Kansas City regional office.
And according to Cosby, everything is going according to plan.
“My intent is to aggressively go after the sex industry,” he told me.
Kind of an old-fashioned way to go about it, if you ask me, I told him.
It’s the Internet age. Pick your fetish, and within a couple of mouse clicks, what’s on your computer screen can more than match what might be available at the dirty book store down the block.
Besides, consider the accused: Only one of the three businesses indicted in JoCo this week was what you might consider a sexually oriented business: Priscilla’s, for allegedly selling various sexual appliances supposedly deemed illegal by Kansas law.
Also charged was a Halloween store for allegedly not keeping its naughtier costumes out of view in a store catering to kids.
The third establishment was a video store known more for its wide selection of film classics than the raunchier fare it also offers.
Which is to say, “Big deal.”
Counters Cosby:
“I am going after the brick and mortar,” he said, “because it’s the place I can grab hold of.”
Ah, yeah, we’ll let that one pass. Suffice it to say, Cosby and his evangelical Christian backers are just getting started.
“It’s been almost 20 years since an obscenity case has been tried in Kansas,” he said. Now 20 porn outlets in Kansas are standing in front of courts and prosecutors. Indictments don’t always lead to convictions, as Cosby’s record clearly shows.
Not one of his targets has so far been convicted of anything in connection with the grand jury probes.
But Cosby has been more successful on the legislative side.
In the past few years, he helped persuade Kansas legislators to, as he puts it, “tweak” laws governing obscenity and the grand jury petition process he’s used to his advantage.
He also was behind a bill that regulates the location of billboards advertising sexually oriented businesses.
There’s more to come, he says, and not just in Kansas.
“Missouri has a bigger problem, a bigger population,” he said.
It’s a bigger problem only if you believe, as Cosby does, that porn is the root of a lot of evils.
Rape, the sexual abuse of children — if it’s violence of a sexual nature, then Cosby believes there’s a cause and effect.
“Pornography is the catalyst that is fueling this fantasy-induced behavior,” he said.
But if it were that simple, then he might win over those of us who think grand juries have better things to do than watch porno movies to determine whether they meet community standards.
Problem is, there is no conclusive evidence to support that, as even Cosby admits.
But you know what they say about obscenity. It’s not easy to define, but you know it when you see it.
Same goes for foolishness, I’d argue.
