Porn Panel Out of the Picture for a Long Time

In his three years as a member of the Los Angeles County Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, Michael B. Bennett has never been to a meeting. But Bennett has an excuse: The panel hasn’t met.

“It looks kind of funny when you have a commission nobody knows about and members have never been called to a meeting,” said Bennett, an administrator with the Los Angeles Unified School District who lives in Sherman Oaks. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

The commission was established in 1964, the same year that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when pressed to define hard-core pornography, said, “I know it when I see it.”

Since then, the pornography industry--centered in the San Fernando Valley--has grown steadily, now with an estimated $4 billion in sales annually.

The county’s porn commission, by comparison, has dwindled to a panel with no staff, no budget and no regular meeting schedule. The Board of Supervisors has cut commission members’ $25-per-meeting stipend and their mileage allowance.

“It’s all volunteers now, you know,” said Hazel B. Geisbauer, a Palmdale resident who heads the commission. “L.A. County is the porno capital of the world, and they don’t seem to care.”

What happened? Commissioners point to legal rulings protecting sexually explicit material and societal changes that have made pornography an accepted, if not welcome, feature of modern American life.

“Times have changed to where there’s no problem with pornography,” said former Commissioner James M. Dunlap, who is disappointed with the trend.

The panel’s slow demise began in the early 1990s when the budget-strapped Board of Supervisors took away the commission’s funding. In 1995, the county auditor recommended disbanding the commission altogether.

The county board voted to continue the panel, with Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina dissenting. The majority argued that it wasn’t costing taxpayer money anyway.

Despite the board action, the commission stopped meeting regularly, Dunlap said. Among other factors, he said, commissioners weren’t being paid for their expenses and had no staff support.

“It was up to members to attempt to handle all the clerical work and to dig into their pockets for postage. It was very difficult,” said Dunlap, 73, formerly of Glendale and now of Newport Beach.

The commission’s official duties include rallying public support for stricter pornography laws and helping county officials “in their campaign against publication and distribution” of porn.

Because of constitutional guarantees of free expression, however, the commission in practice has focused its attention on child pornography--which is illegal--and in efforts to keep pornography from falling into the hands of children, said Commissioner Dolores I. Nason.

“We never tried to legislate morality,” said Nason of Long Beach.

Among other things, the commission helped prepare a pamphlet aimed at building awareness of child pornography. The brochure included tips to parents, including guarding access to their children and teaching them to get parental permission before allowing anyone to photograph them.

Although it was established with 15 members (three appointees per county supervisor), the panel’s latest brochure lists just nine--and when contacted by phone, at least three of them said they had retired from the panel. Panel Chairwoman Geisbauer could not give a current count either.

Molina, who has never appointed anyone to the panel, believes the commission’s accomplishments have been slender.

“She won’t appoint people to a commission that doesn’t have a sense of direction and purpose,” said her press deputy, Miguel Santana. “They haven’t provided one recommendation or report to this office. She’d be the first one to support them if they had a track record.”

Present and former commissioners said the panel’s heyday was in the 1980s, when then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese convened a national commission to fight pornography and obscenity.

During that time, members of the county commission traveled to Washington, D.C., and Sacramento to push anti-smut laws. They supported legislation that made possessing child pornography illegal in California, Nason said.

Commissioners met regularly and even enjoyed refreshments at the county Hall of Administration, Nason said. County staffers helped them keep agendas and minutes of their meetings and issue reports.

County supervisors sometimes dropped by in person, and commissioners sponsored annual luncheons to honor leaders in the anti-porn crusade.

At the meetings, members talked about issues such as prostitution and a few times even tried watching pornographic films they were upset about, recalled former Commissioner Cecil Peterson.

“I said, ‘Shut it off!’ ” said Peterson, 81, who lives in South-Central. “I know what it’s all about, and the others agreed with me.”

Bennett said he would be happy to attend a meeting because he thinks porn should be kept away from children. But he plans to tell Yaroslavsky, who appointed him to the panel, that it appears to be dormant.

“It’s really redundant to have it,” he said, “and it not meet.”