Anti-Smut Bill Is Dealt Major Blow in Senate

The Senate Rules Committee Wednesday dealt a potentially fatal blow to an embattled anti-pornography bill but left the door open slightly for the reelection-conscious full Senate to produce an alternative anti-smut proposal before it adjourns next week.

The bill was sent to another committee where it is expected to be gutted. The action represented a win for Hollywood film producers, actors and directors and for librarians, booksellers, the American Civil Liberties Union, broadcasters and newspaper publishers who feared that the bill would tread on constitutional rights to free speech and press.

For supporters of the proposal, the committee’s action constituted a major setback in a years-long drive to enable communities throughout California to set their own standards of what constitutes obscenity.

The supporters included the California Catholic Conference, various fundamentalist church organizations, the political New Right and an estimated 4,000 citizens who demonstrated in favor of the bill at the Capitol on Aug. 4.

Broader Definitions

The bill, by Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista), essentially would enact broader definitions of what constitutes pornography and empower local communities to set their own standards.

But opposition witnesses told the five-member Rules Committee that such standards could vary wildly from one neighborhood to another in a city and from one city to another.

Proponents, however, noted that other states have enacted similar legislation and it has not resulted in closure of movie theaters, libraries, book stores and exhibitions of art works.

Deddeh’s original bill proposed a community standards provision, but it was stripped out early in the legislative process by the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the Assembly earlier this month, the community standards feature was amended back into the bill and passed overwhelmingly back to the Senate.

Ordinarily, the amended legislation would have been sent directly to the full Senate for concurrence in Assembly amendments. But Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) dispatched it to the Rules Committee, which he chairs.

Roberti, an opponent of the bill who had warned it would “chill” creativity by legitimate businesses and do virtually no harm to pornographers, said he favored sending it to the Judiciary Committee for a second review, an action that would be tantamount to killing it.

But as reelection pressures mount and lawmakers perceive that tough actions against pornography are favored by voters, Roberti and others sought to soften a possible public backlash.

Over Deddeh’s protests, Roberti proposed that the bill be returned to the Judiciary Committee with the recommendation that the committee develop a tough anti-pornography measure that would apply uniform statewide standards.

Joining Roberti were Sens. Nicholas Petris (D-Oakland) and William Craven (R-Oceanside). Sens. Jim Ellis (R-San Diego) and Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) voted “no,” saying they wanted the bill sent to the Senate floor for a vote, where supporters indicated that it would win easy approval.

Mello, who is up for reelection and was regarded as the swing vote, had been under heavy voter pressure in his generally conservative district to support sending the bill to the full Senate. He received thousands of letters and telephone calls under a campaign orchestrated by rock-conservative Sen. H. L. Richardson (R-Glendora) and his computer mailing operation.

Fearing the bill would never emerge from the Judiciary Committee, Father William Wood of the California Catholic Conference, warned, “It doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of passing through that committee.”

However, Roberti indicated that perhaps another bill could be located in the waning days of the legislative session, and it could be amended to include both broader definitions of what constitutes obscenity and a statewide standard.

The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), immediately called a special meeting for Friday to consider writing a pornography bill.

Lockyer, an opponent of the Deddeh plan, told the Rules Committee that the proposal would enable “government to tell adults what they can view or read.”

“We’re talking about censorship for adults,” he said.