Anti-Pornography Bill Gets New Life in the Legislature

Election-year politics have helped resurrect an anti-pornography bill that apparently had been killed several weeks ago by the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

In late March, the Democrat-dominated panel invoked the First Amendment and dug in its heels to sidetrack a controversial bill by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) to ban the sale of sexually explicit tabloids from newspaper stands.

But on Tuesday, the same committee approved a nearly identical measure after two Los Angeles legislators experienced a change of heart.

The main difference in the bill: This time it is being carried by Sen. Ruben S. Ayala (D-Chino), who finds himself in a tight race for reelection in his San Bernardino district. Ayala faces a general election challenge from Assemblyman Charles Bader (R-Pomona).

Ayala acknowledged Tuesday that he intends to use his sponsorship of the copycat anti-pornography legislation in the fall campaign. “Anything I can take in my reelection is helpful,” said the 16-year veteran of the Senate. “Maybe it shows that perhaps the majority party can get through what the minority party can’t.”

One of the Democrats who switched his vote--President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles)--said Tuesday that Ayala privately requested his support, in part, to benefit his reelection campaign.

“Yeah, he said it’s going to help him,” Roberti said. “It’s a good bill for him.”

Roberti insisted, however, that the reason he switched his vote was because he wasn’t prepared to consider the news-rack ban when it first came up. “I didn’t have a chance to go over the language of the Ferguson bill, and you just can’t vote on an area as sensitive as the First Amendment without having time to look it over,” he said.

But even those on the winning side of the issue Tuesday said they considered the committee’s reversal a matter of politics, not of legislative merit.

Said Ferguson: “I’m very pleased that the bill passed through the committee, and hopefully will become law. However, I deplore the political partisanship that was used in this, where a Republican’s good bill is trashed only to become a Democrat’s good bill for reelection.”

The bill would curtail the sale of sex-related newspapers by requiring that adult supervisors must be posted at coin-operated stands displaying publications showing sex acts, masturbation or lewd depictions of genitalia. The requirement would impose an economic burden designed to drive the publications into adult bookstores or out of business.

Past attempts led by Ferguson to ban the news-rack sales have either been watered down or blocked by civil libertarians in the Legislature. But earlier this year, some of those free-speech advocates reversed themselves and supported the Ferguson measure in the Assembly. It appeared to have a fighting chance until the Senate Judiciary Committee scuttled it on March 20. Voting against the measure were Roberti and Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles).

Yet both of those Democrats switched on Tuesday and backed the bill sponsored by Ayala. The committee’s 6-4 vote sent the bill on to the full Senate.

Torres could not be reached for comment.