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As one of the perks purported to distinguish their mode of incarceration from those of prisoners serving criminal sentences, civilly-committed inmates at Kansas's Larned State Hospital (LSH) can own DVD players and DVDs. During his eight years of confinement at the Kansas facility, DVDs have been Mark Brull's window on the world. Early in 2008, however, that window was slammed shut by hospital staff members threatening to initiate Brull's prosecution for possession of child pornography.

"Until I wound up here," Brull says, "I hadn't seen 20 movies in my life. Now, since I can't hang out with gay men, go to clubs, or participate in the gay community, movies and TV shows like Queer as Folk are incredibly important to me."

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rull and three other involuntary participants in Larned's Sexual Predator Treatment Program (SPTP) had been pooling their resources to mail-order films from Deep Discount DVD, TLA, and Barnes & Noble. The 33-year-old Topekan had filled five albums with titles including 104 gay-themed foreign, independent, and Hollywood movies -- Prick Up Your Ears, The Lost Language of Cranes, The Bird Cage, The Closet, A Love to Hide, The History Boys, and more. Every title but one -- Derek Jarman's Sebastiane (1976), sent by mistake on Brull's first attempt to order the 1995 Swedish film Sebastian -- had been pre-approved by hospital staff.

On January 15, Brull's loaned-out copy of the 2002 gay comedy Luster was seized in another inmate's room during a shakedown. Brull produced documentation that the film had been approved, but on January 16, staff psychologist Keri Applequist asked to review his collection of 370 titles.

Applequist, who has urged Brull to spend his time writing to Christian pen-pals, took away his inventory of gay and lesbian movies immediately. Despite certified pre-approval, the rest of the collection was confiscated the next day. Responding to The Guide's inquiries about the seizure, Applequist insisted, "I'm not at liberty to discuss that."

When Brull asked when and if he would get his movies back, SPTP Program Director Leo Herman wrote that while he might recover some of his collection, the administration intended to bring the DVDs to the attention of Kansas Attorney General Stephen Six, to see if child-porn charges were justified. Four titles drew particular scrutiny: Sebastiane, Sebastian, the 1994 Norwegian coming-of-age film Cross My Heart and Hope to Die, and Darren Stein's 2003 documentary Put the Camera on Me. Widely available throughout the U.S. for years, the films have virtually no history of censorship -- except for the excision of a glimpse of adult male erection when Sebastiane was aired on the BBC.

Bureaucratic black hole

Most Larned staff members did not respond to phone calls from The Guide. "I'm supposed to notify a central office about any media contact before getting into matters of policy," Clinical Director Austin DesLauriers told this reporter. The "central office" is that of LSH Communications Director Michelle Ponce, who agreed to provide written answers to a few questions. Stressing that "individuals in the program are patients, not inmates," and that SPTP participants "are generally violent rapists or pedophiles," she writes that with regard to movies, "items deemed inappropriate based on an individual's past behaviors and/or treatment may be withheld."

Forty discs were finally restored to Brull. Nearly all the returned DVDs were selections from television shows such as Home Improvement and Oprah. Except for two religious titles, all theatrical features were excluded. Brull was allowed to retain seasons of Dante's Cove and Queer as Folk, perhaps because the sexually forthright series are TV products assumed to be tamer than films shown in theaters.

Other inmates' movies were not similarly seized, examined, and censored, including those belonging to Garen Stockwell, Brull's co-plaintiff in a lawsuit pending against LSH since 2001. The seizure and ensuing threat may be in direct violation of a 2007 court order forbidding hospital staff to retaliate against Brull -- not only for pursuing legal action, but for writing letters to newspapers, presenting written testimony at legislative hearings, and otherwise speaking out about conditions at Larned State Hospital.

Rules that went into effect on April 1, 2008, however, seem geared to make the question of whether Brull was singled out for harassment academic. The new rules not only proscribe films rated X and NC17, or R-rated films with sexual content, but all films with child protagonists or "child-centered content," unrated films, directors' cuts, and all foreign films, regardless of subject matter. Hospital staff can now say that while certain films, including material returned to Brull, were permissible prior to April 1, they no longer meet standards set by the institution's movie guidelines.

At LSH, where inmates are forbidden to have sex with one another, hospital staff is quick to pounce on anything that might enhance an inmate's sexual encounter with himself. Not only films but video games, music CDs, and books are censored for sexual content. No such restrictions apply to television, including televised presentations of unapproved films.