Board Backs Religious Crusade Against Pornography

A religious crusade against X-rated movies, spearheaded by Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and other prominent clergymen, won the backing Tuesday of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which called for a crackdown on sexually explicit videotapes.

In a unanimous vote, the board agreed to press local and federal law enforcement officials to form special task forces to curb production and distribution of obscene and pornographic videotapes in Los Angeles County.

After listening to testimony describing the county as the “pornography capital of the world,” the supervisors passed a resolution asking U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to create an anti-pornography task force in Los Angeles to strictly enforce the federal obscenity laws.

The supervisors also agreed to direct Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to form a similar group to help enforce state obscenity laws, public nuisance statutes and the unfair trade provisions of the Business and Professional Code as tools against the pornography industry.

The resolution, authored by Supervisor Pete Schabarum, was supported by fellow board members Deane Dana and Ed Edelman. Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Kenneth Hahn were absent.

After the vote, Mahony, whose Archdiocesan Commission on Obscenity and Pornography provided much of the background material for the board’s resolution, applauded the board’s action.

“I think the significance of this resolution is in moving this to the front burner. (It shows) that this issue is a very, very serious community problem, and it’s going to be given the attention that it deserves,” Mahony said.

The archbishop, who has made the anti-pornography campaign one of his major priorities as leader of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s 2.6 million Roman Catholics, urged the supervisors to back the Schabarum resolution at the public hearing.

He was joined by other clergymen, including Rabbi Paul Dubin, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, and the Rev. Fred Cottriel, superintendent of the Southern California District Council of the Assemblies of God.

Elder John Cormack of Salt Lake City, one of the general authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also testified. He stressed that their efforts did not infringe on any First Amendment or free speech rights.

“The issue here is how to put some teeth into enforcement of laws already on the books to prosecute those trafficking in pornography,” the Mormon leader said.

In addition to the church officials, members of the Los Angeles County Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, Meese’s federal Commission on Pornography and representatives of the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department voiced their support for the measure. According to the law enforcement officials, 39 of the nation’s 45 major adult video producers are located in Los Angeles County.

As part of its resolution, the board voted to send copies of 30 videotapes to the U.S. attorney general’s office that Mahony’s archdiocesan commission had reviewed and contended are obscene under local, state and federal laws.