150 Protest Adult Store in Oxnard : Pornography: The demonstrators, mostly from area churches, seek community support to close the shop. But they didn’t deter some patrons.

About 150 people armed with signs protesting pornography stood outside an Oxnard adult bookstore on Saturday morning, trying to drum up community support for closing down the store.

The crowd, most of whom are members of area churches, lined up on the 2300 block of Vineyard Avenue outside the Oxnard News and Video from 9 a.m. to noon. The street is a main thoroughfare in the city and many passing drivers honked their horns in support of or gestured their disapproval of demonstrators.

“This is not a religious issue alone,” said Darcy Taylor, associate pastor with the South Coast Fellowship Church. Studies have shown that pornography contributes to sexual violence, he said. “It’s probably impossible to get rid of adult bookstores 100 percent, but other cities have been successful in restricting them to certain areas,” Taylor said.

Organizers said they chose to protest Oxnard News and Video because it opened in February, and they felt they had a better chance of shutting down a new adult bookstore than an established one. It is the second adult bookstore in Oxnard.

“The way I look at it, I’m not forcing people to come in,” said manager Kenneth Kingsbury. “They’re letting more people know we’re here.”

The protesters did not prevent some customers from entering the store, which sells X-rated movies and magazines and sex devices as well as providing viewing booths for movies.

“I don’t like them imposing their values on me,” said a 42-year-old Port Hueneme woman. She said she had never been to the store before, but her husband had visited it several times.

“We want this one here stopped so no other neighbors will go through what we’ve been through,” said Naomi Knox, who lives near the bookstore. The neighborhood council opposed the bookstore from the beginning, Knox said.

City officials were forced to allow the bookstore to open on Vineyard Avenue because there was no law preventing it, Councilman Mike Plisky said in a phone interview Saturday. “I think everyone on the council was dismayed that they (the bookstore) would be coming to town, but unfortunately we hadn’t anticipated that our laws would be outdated.”

The opposition against the adult bookstore prompted the council to pass a temporary ordinance that bans adult bookstores and movie theaters in areas of Oxnard near the Ventura Freeway until officials get a chance to study the zoning laws in those areas, Plisky said.

Times photographer Alan Hagman contributed to this report.