This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
[Video: Trailer for 'Deadpool.' Safe for work. And for DABC.]
Utah does not deserve to be "mocked and scorned" for its official declaration that pornography is a "public health crisis."
At least, not yet.
With great pomp and ceremony — in a room that might make a good set for a sexy movie set in the 1800s — Gov. Gary Herbert Tuesday signed SCR 9, a measure that declares that "pornography is a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms."
Sen. Todd Weiler, the primary sponsor of the measure, said he believed in the statement even though he had been "mocked and scorned" in the national media.
It won't help Weiler's cause that, the day before the ceremonial signing of his resolution, Utah was being widely mocked, mostly by Utahns, over reports that the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control has busted Brewvies, a popular combination of movie house and tavern.
The citation, which includes threats of a $25,000 fine and a 10-day liquor-license suspension, was for screening the oddball, R-rated superhero movie "Deadpool" in the same place where beer was being served.
"Deadpool" contains a few moments of fairly explicit sexual behavior. Those scenes are the bright spot of the movie, leavening an otherwise unrelenting hour and 48 minutes of bloody violence and torture. And some pretty good jokes.
Naturally, it is the sex, in this case between two consenting adults whose attachment to each other almost provides the film with a plot, that runs afoul of Utah's liquor laws. The mayhem, not so much.
The Utah resolution fails to assign a definition to the term "pornography." Thus does it even fall short of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous, "I know it when I see it." And thus has it allowed people to accuse the good senator of trying to shut down Victoria's Secret or ban solitary sexual behavior.
The legislation's saving feature is that it calls for more research, the kind that might well provide some way to talk about the subject without one side aghast and the other side dissolving into giggles.
Research that might allow Utah, and all civilized states, to embrace healthy expressions of sexuality while protecting minors from images that might, indeed, confuse them in harmful ways. Especially if it conflates sex with violence.
Research that might convince powerful people, in law enforcement and in charge of, oh, say, Brigham Young University, that the victims of sexual assault are indeed victims worthy of protection. To help everyone understand that there are horrible crimes involving sex, but that sex is not a crime.
This is an issue we've been trying to work out since sex was invented, apparently by some Scottish fish some 365 million years ago. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying.