PALMER CITY, AK– If Palmer City Council members had a plan for Valentine’s Day, one can bet that plan wasn’t to sit in meetings discussing a 30 year-old ordinance prohibiting the distribution or sale of obscene materials within city limits.After all, as recently as two months ago the entire Council and assorted other city officials said that they had never heard of the law, and were entirely unaware of any prohibition of obscene materials in Palmer City.
The issue came to the fore when video chain store Movie Gallery, one of the largest home video retailers in the country behind Blockbuster Video, opened a store in “downtown” Palmer. According to a report in the local Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper, approximately 30% of Movie Gallery’s inventory is comprised of adult titles.
At a City Council meeting in January, concerned citizens and residents of the neighborhood where Movie Gallery opened shop amassed to voice their concern over businesses being allowed to distribute sexually-explicit materials in their hometown, which may violate the anti-obscenity ordinance passed in 1978.
The meeting didn’t resolve anything, however, for the simple reason that its not clear to what material Palmer City’s anti-obscenity ordinance applies, or doesn’t apply for that matter.
Thus Palmer finds itself wrestling with a question that is all too familiar to those of us in the adult industry; what is “obscenity,” exactly? Can the “community standards” of this pint-sized city (Palmer’s population is approximately 5,200 people) be determined with any greater certainty, or less controversy, than that of a major population center like Los Angeles?
While the Palmer ordinance in question has language stating that anyone who knowingly brings “obscene materials” within city limits for distribution or sale is violating the ordinance, the ordinance does not offer any definition of “obscene”, or “obscene materials.” Without that definition, noted City Manager Tom Healy, the ordinance is impossible to enforce.
Pending the establishment of such a definition, Palmer’s ordinance is not being enforced, but Movie Gallery competitor Pioneer Video has already pulled all sexually explicit videos from its shelves, which it says it did two months ago when the store owners first became aware of the ordinance.
“There are other video stores that carry adult videos (in Palmer) and our real-estate guys thought it was OK,” said Ted Innes, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the Pioneer Video, which is also a national chain. “We do whatever the local ordinances say and whatever the law allows.”
Palmer’s first stab at defining the elusive concept of obscenity begins tonight, with a Council meeting scheduled for 7 PM local time.
Here’s hoping that small town Alaska fares better, and arrives at a more sensible and comprehensible definition than has hitherto emanated the halls of our national Congress, or from State Assemblies across the land.
