Court Discusses Movie Sex Scenes

WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court justices, whose tastes are said to run to opera and Cole Porter, spent an hour Tuesday discussing the sex scenes in modern movies and whether the government can ban depictions that seem to show children having sex.

Sitting in a borrowed courtroom for a second day, the court considered a free speech case with implications for the future of high technology if not high art.

Free speech advocates and pornographers challenged a 1996 law in which Congress forbade any visual depiction of what ``appears to be'' children in sexually explicit situations or that is advertised to convey the impression that someone under 18 is involved.

Through computer wizardry not available when the court placed child pornography outside First Amendment protection in 1982, pornographers can create dirty movies about children and adolescents that involve no actual children.

Legitimate filmmakers also can fool the eye by using youthful-looking adult actors to portray adolescents, and it was the consequences of that practice that captured the justices' attention Tuesday.

Told that the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act would stomp on artistic freedom, Justice Antonin Scalia reacted strongly.

``Such as what?'' he demanded. ``I'm trying to think what great works of art would be taken away from us if we were unable to see minors copulating.''

Louis Sirkin, representing a trade association for pornographers, drew unintended laughter by replying that along with the 1979 Academy Award-winning drama ``The Tin Drum,'' old Brooke Shields movies might be off-limits under a strict interpretation of the government's position.

``The Tin Drum'' is an allegorical tale of a school-age boy growing up in Nazi Germany. It includes a gauzy scene of the boy apparently engaged in oral sex with an older girl.

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