Toushin was elected to the board of the Free Speech Coalition an organization that represents the Adult Industry. This award recognized Toushin's (starting in 1969) contribution as a major player in developing the modern Adult Industry. In January 2009 at the AVN award show in Las Vegas Toushin was inducted into the prestigious Founders Branch. In the June 2008 AVN (Adult Video News) magazine's 25th anniversary edition Toushin was acknowledged as one of the 25 pioneers who developed the Gay/bi Adult Film Industry. He is the 3rd person to ever receive this honor. In 2007 at the GayVN award show in San Francisco, Toushin was awarded the “Life Time Achievement Award” from the Gay Adult Industry.
In 1989 at the Adult Video Awards show in Las Vegas Toushin received (while he was in prison) the Reuben Sturman Award “For Legal Battles on Behalf of the Adult Industry. He has written for several weekly gay magazines, and has authored four books, The Puppy Papers, Puppy's Tales, The Destruction of the Moral Fabric of America, and the Bijou Cock Coloring Book. In 1987 he made a censorship commercial that was put on 70% of all sex tapes till 1993. Toushin published The Bijou Video Catalog which many called the bible of gay video from 1980 to 1995. With the advent of video Toushin became a major distributor of gay pornographic and S/M films until 1995. Toushin made and produced both gay and straight adult films from 1971 to 1996 as well as S/M films in the 1970s and Slave & Master films in the early 1980s. Over all his businesses have included theaters, sex clubs, gay bathhouses, massage parlors (prostitution), and adult bookstores in Chicago, San Francisco, Indianapolis, and East Chicago. Toushin is still the owner of the Bijou Theater (1970) the oldest gay theatre/sex club in the U.S., and Bijou Video a gay adult mail order company (1978). Toushin has been incarcerated twice (19) spending three years in federal prison for being in his chosen profession. Toushin has flourished longer than anyone else in the adult industry despite 35 arrests (personally), and 200 busts to his businesses that included 21 obscenity trials, five federal trials, three federal appeals (winning two) and numerous state and local trials.
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The last police raid on his business was in 1996 and his last federal trial (second trial for tax's stemming from 1980 to 1982) was in 1998.
Steven's book, The Destruction of the Moral Fabric of America, is centered on this trial. This resulted in an extraordinary SM trial that included many well-known people from the Leather community. In 1987, several of his Slave and Master films were indicted on federal obscenity charges in Tennessee, Utah and Nebraska as a result ofĪttorney General Meese's Commission on Pornography. His last obscenity bust was in 1991 for the Film "More of a Man". His first federal obscenity trial occurred in 1973 for screening Ranch Slaves. The case resulting from the 1974 arrest was dismissed after a two-week jury trial: Toushin also defended himself in two federal obscenity suits regarding BDSM. In 1970 similar charges were brought for screening I Am Curious (Yellow) in Indianapolis, in 1973 for Deep Throat and in 1974 for Teenage Fantasies. Obscenity charges were brought under Illinois state law. Toushin's first arrest for obscenity occurred in 1969 for screening the underground classic film Flaming Creatures by Jack Smith. Of these only the Bijou remained open until late 2015. Later that year Toushin and his partners opened other theaters and sex clubs throughout Chicago, San Francisco, Indianapolis, East Chicago and Gary, Indiana, including the Festival Chicago, Festival Indianapolis, Termite, 3-Penny, Eden, Savages, and Bijou Theaters. In 1970 Toushin and partners presented at the Aardvark the first hardcore film to be released commercially in the U.S, Alex DeRenzy's "Pornography in Denmark" at that point the Aardvark became a porn theater. The Aardvark's screening policy was not a successful endeavor and to sustain itself turned to screening art films that displayed nudity from time to time to turn a profit. This was the beginning of his unusual career.
Steven left New England in the summer of 1968 landing in Chicago, where he got a job managing the Aardvark Theater in Pipers Alley that showed 16mm underground experimental art and documentary films. During the next two years he traveled and worked at odd jobs digging graves, short order cook, picking potatoes, cutting pulp wood throughout New England. He left New York in 1963 at the age of 18, on his bicycle and traveled to Montreal to see Marlene Dietrich at Expo. Steven Toushin was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.