County Panels Plot Strategies in War Against Porno Industry

Amid the ballyhoo surrounding the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, two more-modest groups appointed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors are planning to recommend a series of steps--legislative, enforcement and educational--to curb pornography here.

Los Angeles is frequently identified as the nation’s “porn capital,” and the national commission was highly critical of the paucity of federal obscenity prosecutions here, noting that Los Angeles and New York are “where the majority of obscene materials are . . . being produced or distributed.”

Members of both local bodies did not disagree, but Victor Epport, a Beverly Hills attorney who chairs both groups, took issue with the (Atty. Gen. Edwin) Meese Commission’s key finding that pornography breeds violence.

By contrast, their quiet approach is to concentrate on small but realistic ways to dent the pornography problem rather than to call for vast resources and sweeping changes aimed at eliminating it entirely.

One of them, the Los Angeles County Anti-Pornography Task Force, will recommend Tuesday that the Board of Supervisors:

- Support new state legislation to enact an obscenity standard already adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in an Orange County case 13 years ago. That decision defined a work as obscene if, when taken as a whole, it lacks “serious” literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

California law requires that material must be “utterly” without redeeming social value to be prosecuted as obscene. A new law that takes effect in January is expected to improve enforcement efforts by redefining obscene works as those lacking “significant” value.

The difference between significant and serious might seem small, but by adopting the exact wording already upheld in other states and in the federal courts, California could avoid otherwise inevitable court tests of the new statute, the task force believes.

Meanwhile, the task force urged that the new state law be vigorously enforced, even if that means hiring more sheriff’s or district attorney’s personnel.

- Encourage more cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and federal agencies, such as the U.S. attorney’s office and the U.S. Postal Service.

- Urge the application of the state’s criminal profiteering act--by which authorities can seize ill-gained assets or profits--to pornographers. Florida and Texas are among the leaders in using existing laws in novel ways to pursue pornographers, the task force found.

- Ask local authorities to apply zoning laws wherever possible to rid neighborhoods of so-called “adult businesses” near homes, schools and churches.

- Drop further consideration of a pornography ordinance proposed by the county’s Commission on Women because a similar city ordinance in Indianapolis--which defined pornography as the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women--was found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in February.

- Direct the county Commission on Obscenity and Pornography to develop public awareness programs that include attention to child sexual abuse.

The 13-member group has been meeting at least monthly since last fall to monitor pornography legislation and court decisions across the country and to explore alternatives other than more laws. Its mission accomplished, it has disbanded.

Besides Epport, the task force included representatives from the Commission for Women, county counsel, chief administrative office, district attorney, Sheriff’s Department and the Filming Advisory Commission, as well as several constitutional lawyers.

Unlike the short-lived task force, the 15-member Los Angeles County Commission on Obscenity and Pornography has existed for 22 years. The group--including a gay businessman, two Moral Majority supporters, a black clergyman, and several educators and youth workers--reflects a wide range of backgrounds and views on pornography.

Its president, the 56-year-old Epport, is a married father of three, a lawyer who specializes in business litigation and a self-described “middle-of-the-road conservative.”

He said that while he disagrees with the Meese Commission’s conclusion that pornography and crimes of violence are linked--”I’ve never seen evidence of it”--he is in favor of curbs on pornography “if there’s even a possibility” that one may lead to the other.

Yet, he added: “I do have a problem with where you draw the line, whether this obscene pornography is protected under the Constitution. I don’t like the idea of censorship as such.”

Epport said he and other commission members believe strongly in the necessity for restraints on pornography.

“It’s clear that most of obscene pornography deals with women as sex objects, distorting the relationship between men and women,” he said. “A lot of it involves children, and I can’t think of anything more degrading or humiliating.”

Another commission member, businessman Don Genhart, said he welcomed the attention the Meese Commission report has attracted: “Many citizens believed that pornography is victimless, now they know better--that it is associated with violence, child abuse and the degradation of women.”

Genhart said he is not concerned about magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, but about what he called “hard-core porn.”

The commission is preparing a pamphlet about child pornography, with names and telephone numbers to call with complaints, for distribution to the schools this fall. The group is also setting up a series of seminars and lectures to increase public awareness of what pornography exists and what they can do about it.

Said Genhart: “We are trying everything from public forums in high schools to puppet shows for youngsters--anything that will alert parents and the public to the $8-billion pornography business of which Los Angeles is the capital.”

Los Angeles Police Department officials say the pornography industry here generates more than $550 million worth of products annually.

LAPD Capt. James Docherty, commander of the administrative vice division, testified before the Meese Commission last year that 39 of the 45 major adult video producers in the country are here, besides 49 adult motels, 38 adult bookstore/arcades, 25 adult theaters, more than 400 video stores selling adult materials, 14 adult magazine producers and distributors, 9 adult 8-millimeter film producers and the largest “rubber goods” producer in the United States.