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an Unlikely Porn Icon By Rodger Streitmatter Media Matters
Womack was born in Mississippi in 1923 and moved north to attend college, earning two degrees from George Washington University in the nation's capital and then a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After teaching philosophy for a few years, Womack tired of the academic life and shifted to the faster-paced and more financially lucrative business world.
The Guild Press specialized in magazines with titles such as MANualand Manorama that were produced under a company that Womack named Manual Enterprises, Inc. With 40,000 men from all over the country on the Guild Press mailing list and eager to purchase male physique magazines at fifty cents an issue, the operation was financially successful. Titillating photos were the dominant element in the publications. When written material appeared, it was generally in the form of brief captions accompanying the images. Compared to today's pornography, those images were decidedly tame. The only naked models to appear in the magazines were shot from the rear. When a frontal view was printed, a cloth pouch concealed the model's genitals. Nor was there any sign, from underneath those carefully arranged swatches of fabric, that a man was sexually aroused to the point of having an erection.
At the time, homosexuality and pornography were both tightly regulated. Sex between men carried a sentence of as many as 20 years in prison; in the District of Columbia alone, some 1,000 men a year were arrested throughout the 1950s. And all material perceived as encouraging sexual activity between men was considered per se obscene. Womack was convicted on 29 obscenity counts and sentenced to concurrent sentences of one to three years in prison. Rather than going to jail, though, Womack was sent to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane. He avoided prison by arguing that he was a homosexual and therefore, according to the American Psychiatric Association, was mentally ill. The publisher fought to avoid a prison cell partly because he preferred the relative comfort of a hospital-he bribed the doctors into giving him a private room, TV and typewriter-and partly because he wanted to be in a place where he could strategize on how to change the definition of obscenity with regard to materials aimed at gay men. During his 18 months in the mental institution, Womack continued to operate the Guild Press, with his employees visiting him on a regular basis as questions about the business arose, while also spending time researching the definition of obscenity and conferring with his lawyer. As soon as Womack was released from the hospital, he turned the tables on the government. Specifically, he took the audacious step of suing the U.S. Postmaster General-a step only a handful of gay people had taken up to that time-and demanding that his magazines be mailed. The initial legal response was not good, as the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals both ruled against Womack. The tide began to turn, though, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case-the Court accepts only a tiny percentage of the cases that are appealed to it. When Womack went before the highest court in the land in February 1962, he argued that postal officials were guilty of discrimination. In simple terms, the professor-turned-publisher said: If straight men are allowed to feast their eyes on provocative photos of women in Playboy, gay men should be allowed to feast their eyes on provocative photos of men in Manorama. The justices of the High Court-or, more specifically, six of the seven who heard the case-bought Womack's argument. So on June 25, 1962, they ruled, in the landmark case of Manual Enterprises Inc. v. J. Edward Day, Postmaster General of the United States, that postal authorities had to deliver Womack's magazines. After that date, homoerotic materials were no longer per se considered obscene. That decision represented a major boost to the American gay press. The next few years saw a proliferation of publications that included images of either nude or scantily clad men.
Indeed, the thousands of magazines, newspapers, videos and Websites today that include such images are all descended from Womack's publications. And, therefore, all the men who find pleasure in such materials owe a debt of gratitude to the man who had the courage and the wherewithal to take the case to the Supreme Court.
After the historic decision, Womack's life was a mix of ups and downs. As word of his judicial triumph spread, the pioneering publisher became something of a gay folk hero. There were times in the mid-1960s when he walked into a gay bar and someone recognized him and his contributions. On such occasions, a cluster of handsome young men would surround the obese man with white hair and pink eyes, jostling with each other to see which one had the pleasure of buying him a drink. Womack's courtroom victory boosted his business as well. He created several magazines, with titled such as Big Boys and Male Swinger, that featured full frontal nudity. He also established a chain of adult bookstores in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. By 1965, Womack boasted that his mailing list had grown to 750,000 and that his empire was grossing $2 million a year. But federal officials arrested Womack again in 1970. This time, the charges focused not so much on the fact that the models in his magazines were not fully dressed but that some of them were below the age of consent. During the trial, Womack presented himself as a civil libertarian who was fighting for equal rights for homosexuals. The images of partially nude boys in a magazine aimed toward gay men, however, were too damaging for his defense arguments to overcome. The jury found the publisher guilty on 15 counts of mailing obscene material. Accepting the fact that American society was not willing to condone magazines that might encourage sex between men and children, Womack did not appeal the verdict. Instead, he devoted his resources to trying to avoid going to jail, successfully having the initial sentence of two and a half years reduced to six months. It was the court's other stipulations that ultimately had a larger impact on Womack's life. Tired of dealing with the man who had become widely-and derisively-known as "the Porn King of Washington," the judge agreed to reduce Womack's sentence only if he left Washington and withdrew from all association with the business he had built. Womack agreed and, after serving his six months in jail, moved to southern Virginia.
Womack complied with his court-ordered exile from the nation's capital. He founded and managed a conventional bookstore in Norfolk during the 1970s and then retired to Florida. He died in Boca Raton in 1985, at the age of 62. Although Womack's contributions have been largely forgotten, they are significant. First, his landmark Supreme Court case has repeatedly been cited, during the last 40 years, as a precedent in other First Amendment cases. In fact, just last month the justices of the High Court referred to the Manual Enterprises case when deciding that the latest version of the Child Online Protection Act was unconstitutional. Second, Womack's victory became a milestone in the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement. By convincing the highest judicial authorities in the country that gay men were being discriminated against with regard to the sexual materials that were made available to them, the former professor helped to reduce the widespread bigotry that gay people had faced for centuries. Finally-and perhaps most tangibly vis-à-vis the lives of gay men today-Lynn Womack's strength, courage and wherewithal in taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, during an era when the vast majority of gay people hid their sexuality from the public because of the stigma attached to it, ultimately have increased the quality of life for the legions of gay men who enjoy the titillation of looking at images of other men. 
Rodger Streitmatter, Ph.D. is a member of the School of Communication faculty at American University in Washington, D.C. His latest book, Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America has just been published by Columbia University Press. He is also the author of Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay & Lesbian Press in America (Faber & Faber, 1995) and Raising Her Voice: African American Women Journalists Who Changed History (The University Press of Kentucky, 1994)
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Images like this appeared in Herman Lynn Womack's publications more than 40 years ago. Womack defended the right to publish these images in a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1962 
Herman Lynn Womack 
Without its founder, the publishing empire collapsed. By the time the Guild Press closed its doors in 1974, its liabilities exceeded its assets by $1 million.
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