Provo Council to target racy magazine covers
Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to place a resolution promoting "child-appropriate standards" on the agenda for an upcoming council meeting.
The resolution has no teeth. It encourages businesses to join in the effort to reduce the display and availability of images and written material inappropriate for children. And it isn't a radical idea — 21 other Utah communities have passed similar resolutions over the past four years, according to Bountiful-based Citizens for Families.
The resolution makes no effort to list or define child-appropriate standards. Council chairman George Stewart, who initiated the effort in Provo, referred to pornography, saying that many experts consider it a national plague and more addictive than alcohol and other drugs.
He also commented on magazine covers.
"Some of us have gone into stores where the magazines aren't appropriate for children," Stewart said.
So far, there's no guarantee Provo businesses would be aware of the resolution.
"We're working on that," Stewart said after another council member asked him about distributing the resolution to businesses.
"It's just a statement of policy," said JoAnn Hibbert Hamilton, president of Citizens for Families. "It doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. The misunderstanding comes when people think it will be used to hit businessmen over the head and force them to do things."
In Hamilton's eyes, Pleasant Grove had such a misunderstanding recently when its City Council rejected a similar proposal.
The Pleasant Grove resolution failed, Hamilton said, because a city employee added language that was too strong to a draft provided by Citizens for Families.
Most cities have passed the resolutions unanimously, including Hamilton's hometown of Bountiful, which went first in 2002. The latest to pass a child-appropriate standards resolution is Roosevelt, which adopted one in December.
"There have been no legal problems as a result of passing these," Hamilton said.
The resolutions could become legal tools over time. Obscene speech is not protected under the First Amendment, and in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court developed a "test" to determine what is obscene. The first part of the test is whether an average person, using community standards, would believe the work in question appeals to prurient interest.
Provo's resolution would be only a small step toward such a strong standard, but if stores throughout the city followed the suggestion, a legally defensible community standard could emerge, Hamilton said.
"Store managers listen to the public," she said. "If people approach store managers, they respond to their customers. Bountiful is about 95 percent child-appropriate now."
Hamilton said Citizens for Families does not intend to restrict adult access, only to reduce the exposure of children to sexual images.
"Every city should be jumping to do this," Hamilton said. "Every city has a sexually oriented business law. They should have a community standard, as well."
E-mail: twalch@desnews.com
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