SACRAMENTO, CA — California-based representatives of the adult entertainment industry are visiting Sacramento today to meet with state lawmakers as part of the 10th annual Celebrate Free Speech Lobbying Day event, the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) announced in a press release.The event, sponsored by the FSC, effectively turns notable figures from within the adult industry into “citizen lobbyists for a day,” as the FSC puts it in its release. One such figure is Mary Carey, the performer-turned-politician who ran in the same election that resulted in current California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Proposed state legislation being discussed includes Assembly Bill 1551, which would create an “Adult Entertainment Venue Impact Fund.” Sponsored by Assemblyman Chuck Calderon (D-Whittier), if passed the bill would impose another tax on the adult industry in California.
“Like the motion picture industry, we have to compete against overseas competition which pirates our products and sells them over the internet,” states Diane Duke, Executive Director for the Coalition, in the FSC release. “More than 50,000 people are employed by the industry in California. Do we really want to compromise those jobs?”
According to the FSC, the added cost of business is not the only problem with the legislation, which contains a series of legislative findings concerning the impact of adult businesses on their surrounding area – a set of oft-repeated “negative secondary effects.”
“According to FSC attorneys, this bill is fraught with constitutional problems,” says Matt Gray, FSC’s California lobbyist, “and unfairly singles out the industry, while falsely promoting myths about adult entertainment.”
The bill states, among other things that “Adult entertainment venues engender many types of criminal activities,” and “frequently cause adverse effects on local property values and on the public health, safety, and welfare of citizens in their vicinity, and on the character of local neighborhoods.”
The bill also asserts that the “presence of adult entertainment venues often impacts the character of neighborhoods and curtails and prevents development of properties in its general vicinity.”
Having stated the above, the text of the bill states that the measure “is intended to represent a balancing of competing interests: addressing criminal activity and protecting neighborhoods and development through the taxation of adult entertainment venues balanced against the legally protected rights of adult entertainment establishments and patrons.”
Naturally, the text of the legislation also specifies that the Adult Entertainment Venue Impact Fund “is not intended as a de facto prohibition of legally protected forms of expression.”
In a related press release issued over the weekend, the FSC announced that it would hold a press conference on the West Steps of the State Capitol building in Sacramento, which was to take place at 10:30am local time, today (Monday, April 23).
From 11:00am to 4:30pm today, the FSC and other representatives of the adult industry will take part in “lobby day advocacy,” according to the FSC release, followed by a legislative reception from 5:00pm to 7:00pm, which is to be held at the Barbelo Lounge in Chops, located at 1117 11th Street in Sacramento.
