"Sin comes from the soul, not from the flesh..." --St. Augustine

THERE WERE WALLS, invisible walls, everywhere. He was a man. A maaaaan, standing with other real men, like him, between an army of picketers who chided him, mocked him, and a movie which tickled his most secret dreams. Their chants were full of spirit and venom, like so many football fans who had once cheered him. But much different...these people hated him, and he hated them, his eyes wandering nervously about in their sockets, half hate, half humiliation, so he drank more beer, and laughed at them. The beer made it easy.

He waited for the show to start, gathering close by his buddies, throwing up impenetrable, bitter walls of beer, and through it they could see the others complain and nag.

'Heeey, I'll bet she's a piece," he said loudly to his buddy. His buddy smiled and nodded at the Black woman.

"Motherfucker..." the woman hissed back, her eyes welling up.

"You bet honey!" the man replied and the buddies laughed heartily. They were there for entertainment, a good show--a woman with a clitoris in her throat--and there's nothing like good entertainment. Nothing like a good showmaster to lock the doors of the theater and pull down the shades and give you all the toys you want...girls, pills, grass, a vibrating thumbsucker if you want...everybody wants to see it, too many people want this--it's democratic...the show must go on, the greatest show on earth: war, crucifixion, rape, submission...to You...you can be anything you want, here, in this theater locked and alone, you don't have to live with anybody, be responsible for anything...you can be whatever you want to be...except yourself.

The show must go on.

THE LAWYER stood up on the steps of the theater. The theater was dark, silent, the show was running. The picketeers listened to his rising voice--trembling with indignation at times--pointing, pounding, and they looked up at him and listened, eager for him to stop, eager to respond. He was talking about freedom.

"The power of the press is not the power to molest," an angry picketeer told him.

"The power of the press may be the power to molest...the best response to bad speech is good speech, not censorship, because when you invoke the power of the state to censor--to arrest two of your fellow students--you make it possible for that power to be used against you, and anyone else who wants to make a statement."

Bursts of disgust popped out from the crowd, interrupting each other; the lawyer continued over the swelling anger.

"And I will support the right of someone who wants to show a film depicting the lynching of a Black man..."

"Motherfucker!" a woman hurried off, crying.

"...just as I will support the right of a person to make a film against bigotry."

More people walked off, left the heat behind. Some were crying, unable to find the words--or any expression at all--for their twisted hearts. Like the two buddies, they walked away from it.