Assembly Votes to Let Communities Set Porn Standards

The Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a bill to let individual communities set their own obscenity standards--in place of statewide standards--and thus make it easier for local authorities to prosecute pornographers.

The election-year action was greeted with a round of applause in the lower house chamber from some of an estimated 4,000 anti-obscenity demonstrators who had been rallying on the Capitol steps.

A 57-11 bipartisan vote sent the bill, sponsored by Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh (D-Chula Vista), back to the Senate for concurrence in lower house amendments.

The measure defines as obscene any material that an average person applying contemporary community standards, rather than statewide standards, would find to appeal to prurient interests. This manner of determining who may deem what is obscene and what is not allows a wide degree of local control, a concept that has been upheld by the Supreme Court and is known in legal circles as the Miller Standard after the name of the case, Miller vs. California.

In its 1973 ruling, the court refined its definition of obscene material. It said that obscene publications were those that depicted sexual conduct as patently offensive and lacking in serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. Until then, the measure of obscenity was whether material was considered utterly without redeeming social value.

In California, similar obscenity laws were adopted but the standard was applied statewide, preventing communities from applying standards of their own. Deddeh’s bill when first introduced last year would have imposed the Miller Standard allowing local control but this feature was modified in the Senate Judiciary and the Assembly Public Safety committees.

On Thursday, before the vote on the bill, the Assembly by a vote of 54 to 12 adopted an amendment to restore the complete Miller standard.

“California is the pornography capital of the world, and it’s time to stop it,” said Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Carmichael), who handled the bill on the floor. “Thirty-nine other U.S. states have adopted this standard.

‘Gross, Sickening Stuff’

“The only reason to vote against it is so pornography attorneys can tie up in court every community’s effort to crack down on hard-core pornography. And we’re not talking about Playboy magazine here.” Leslie said the bill seeks to curb what he called “gross, sickening stuff . . . such as child pornography, bestiality, actual intercourse, sodomy and the like.”

Asked by a reporter whether, for example, video stores that deal in both non-pornographic and X-rated films could be vulnerable to prosecution, Leslie said “certain movies” could be found in violation of the proposed law, depending on local interpretations of obscenity.

The U.S. attorney general’s task force on pornography’s final report said the activity is an $8-billion-a-year industry in the United States and is linked to organized crime, Leslie said.

An opponent, Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Tarzana) said, “The fact is that this amendment brings Big Brother into the lives of the people of this state and undermines their constitutional rights.”

Another foe, Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) warned of the “danger of creating a patchwork morality across the state that is different from county to county.”

Give Them the Tools

A proponent of the bill, Assemblyman Eric Seastrand (R-Salinas), said: “This bill will give law enforcement the tools they need to deal with hard-core pornography. It gives us a chance to do something for the children of this state.”

Speaking at the rally on the Capitol steps before the vote, Barbara Alby, president of the Womens Lobby, told a cheering crowd: “We don’t come here like the traditional lobbyist. We don’t come on behalf of big business. We come on behalf of families.”

The crowd chanted back “Remember in November,” calling on voters to recall in the coming elections which Assembly incumbents voted for and against the bill.

Later, during a break on the floor, Assemblyman Norm Waters (D-Plymouth), assistant to the majority floor leader, had his picture taken while standing in front of the electronic vote score board to show his green aye vote, presumably for reelection campaign purposes.