Vote Switch Kills Ferguson Bill to Ban Sex Tabloid News Racks

With a change of heart by one of the Legislature’s most liberal members, a bill that would have banned the sale of sexually explicit tabloids from unattended news racks was killed Tuesday by the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

It was on the strength of a favorable vote by Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Oakland) that the bill barely passed the same committee when it came up for a spirited debate in January. At the time, Bates explained that he agreed with the argument of Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), the bill’s author, and others that street sales of the material depicting sex acts and poses provided too much temptation for children.

But on Tuesday, Bates reversed himself and the bill died for a lack of votes. “After giving it large amounts of time (for study), I came to a conclusion that it was an error when I voted for the Ferguson bill,” Bates told his colleagues.

The measure, in effect, would have banned the sale of the sex tabloids by requiring 24-hour adult supervision for the newsstand sale of “harmful” material, already defined by law to include photographs of overt sexual acts and lewd displays of genitalia.

Supporters of the bill said the requirement of adult supervision was necessary to keep the explicit material out of the hands of children, who they claimed used their allowance and school lunch money to buy the adult papers from sidewalk news racks.

However, the American Civil Liberties Union and other free-speech advocates argued that censorship aimed at driving the tabloids out of business was the real motive of those backing the bill.