In 2000, former governor of Utah Michael Leavitt signed into law the nation’s first pornography czar role in an effort to “codify our highest moral aspirations.” Nearly two decades later, the state is trying to eliminate the position.
“Of course, the whole thing was a public-relations nightmare and kind of made Utah the laughingstock of the nation,” Sen. Todd Weiler said, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported.
Weiler is a co-sponsor of a new bill that aims to get rid of the “obscenity and pornography complaints ombudsman,” also known as the porn czar. The House voted unanimously on Thursday to pass the bill, which will now go to the Senate, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune.
The porn czar’s responsibilities did not extend to TV or the internet, but rather involved “advising municipal governments about obscenity law, helping tailor ordinances to suit local tastes as the United States Supreme Court has allowed, arbitrating problems when possible and prosecuting violations when necessary,” according to the New York Times. The government reportedly allocated $75,000 for the position, which began in 2001. Attorney Paula Houston was hired for the role and granted a $150,000 annual budget, and held the position for two years until she lost her job due to government budget cuts in 2003. But while she reigned as porn czar, Houston prosecuted three cases, and in her first year in office, she received about 1,500 complaints regarding explicit material.
“If a state legislature is looking for a way to improve the world, this is not an illogical way to strike a blow,’’ Leavitt told the New York Times, as he was planning to sign the porn czar position into law. “Time will tell if it’s a good use of state money. But to me, there is no harm in trying.’’
Turns out, allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of two years to mostly symbolically enforce a conservative agenda is not a good use of state money. And now lawmakers are trying to bury their mortification by officially repealing the position from Utah’s state code.
But the porn czar’s formal send off is likely nothing more than an attempt to save face. Utah has long fought a war against porn. Weiler himself announced in 2016 that he planned to draft legislation would require internet service providers to roll out anti-porn filters. This was shortly after Utah declared porn a “public health crisis.”