Anti-Pornography Bill Approved by State Senate

The state Senate on Monday passed and sent to the Assembly a bill broadening the definition of obscenity in California to encourage more prosecutions against panderers of lewd materials.

After persistent wrestling with the issue by the courts, the bill by Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista) could bring about the first significant change in California’s obscenity laws in 24 years. State lawmakers have left intact a decades-old obscenity standard that requires materials to be “utterly without redeeming social importance” for them to be outlawed. Most other states have adopted tougher laws since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Miller decision, which defined obscenity as material lacking “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

Ten previous attempts to bring California law in line with the Miller standard had been killed in Senate and Assembly committees since 1975, although the case that brought about the change in the federal law originated in California’s Orange County.

Deddeh had originally written his bill to mirror the Supreme Court’s 1973 definition of obscenity, but it was amended, before passing the Judiciary Committee in February, to make just a tiny word change that proponents, nonetheless, said could be extremely significant.

Instead of retaining the state definition of obscenity as material “utterly without redeeming social importance,” the state’s Penal Code would be changed to outlaw materials “without significant redeeming social importance.”

Deddeh and other backers of the change say the $7-billion pornography industry has flourished in California because of the unworkable definition created by the word “utterly.”

“This is a significant change,” Deddeh said. “. . . there is an awful lot of difference between the word significant and the word utterly .”

Deddeh said he is confident the Assembly will also pass his bill, which the Senate approved Monday by a 31-3 vote.