County Rejects Wide Anti-Smut Law; 2 Weaker Ones OKd

Faced with strong warnings that such a law would open a Pandora’s Box of censorship and legal attacks, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors shied away on Tuesday from adopting a controversial anti-pornography ordinance pushed by the county Commission for Women.

Instead the board, on separate 3-2 roll calls, tentatively adopted two less sweeping anti-pornography ordinances that will go into effect only if the state gives the county permission to implement them. The weakened ordinances have all the teeth of a “wet noodle,” groused Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who voted against them.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who supported the compromise action, said the Legislature is unlikely to adopt laws enabling the county to put the local ordinances into effect.

Basis of Suits

The compromise ordinances, suggested by County Counsel DeWitt Clinton, would permit anyone forced to participate in making or viewing materials that depict sexual violence or abuse to sue those responsible for making the material.

They would also allow assault victims to recover monetary damages from pornographers if the victims could show that they had been assaulted because their attackers had viewed pornographic materials.

In addition, the ordinances would adopt a definition of obscene matter suggested by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973. If the state agrees, the Penal Code definition of obscene material would change from that “utterly without redeeming social importance” to “material, taken as a whole, (that) lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” Prosecutors say use of the U.S. Supreme Court’s version would help them secure convictions of pornographers.

The supervisors rejected without a vote the county’s advisory Commission for Women proposal for a law declaring pornography a form of sex discrimination. Under that proposal, makers and distributors of obscene material could have been sued by any woman who believed that such material was offensive to women as a group.

Supporting the Commission for Women’s proposal were Supervisors Hahn and Mike Antonovich.

Commission members said after the vote that they will push for bills pending in the state Legislature that would allow the two county ordinances to take effect.

Vulnerable to Attack

Clinton and representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union had concluded that the commission’s proposal was vulnerable to constitutional attack and was preempted by state law.

The board action capped more than a year of hearings by the advisory panel, as well as several months of lobbying by feminist and civil liberties groups that had become polarized by the anti-pornography issue.

Before the final vote, during a hearing marred by several outbursts and hissing, Clinton’s views came under fire by proponents of the sex discrimination language who argued that their approach was not only constitutional but necessary.

“The harm in pornography far outweighs any problems, any risks,” commission member Betty Rosenstein told the board.

In stronger terms, feminist attorney Gloria Allred lashed out at Clinton’s conclusions as granting a “bill of rights for pornographers,” adding that the county’s reluctance to adopt such an ordinance is a “slap in the face of women.” Clinton’s compromise language, Allred said, is an “insult.”

When Supervisor Deane Dana asked Allred if it were fiscally responsible for the county to adopt an ordinance that might cost more than $1 million to defend, Allred shot back, “Women cannot afford to go without protection from pornography.” Dana voted for the compromise.

A parade of people who opposed the commission’s proposal, including law professors, a woman who gave only the name Jane and who said she is a nude dancer, lawyers and bookstore owners, told the board that the commission’s proposal could pave the way for widespread censorship and even exacerbate the problem that the commission is hoping to solve.