Memo to Legislatures: THIS Is What a “Public Health Crisis” Looks Like

It’s been just under four years since Utah Governor put pen to paper to sign a nonbinding resolution declaring pornography to be (among other things) a “public health crisis.”

The resolution also used the E word – “epidemic” – to underline just how detrimental they believe pornography is to people’s health.

As I write this post, Utah’s own reports indicate that the state has 1012 COVID-19 cases and seven deaths attributed to the virus. Across the country, we’re up to 217,661 total reported cases and over 5100 deaths.

So, I’m just going to cut to the chase and be the asshole who says it out loud: Governor Gary Herbert, motherfucker, this is what a public health crisis looks like.

But no worries, residents of Utah! Your Governor is taking BOLD ACTION – by allowing a new bill requiring porn producers and distributors to put warning labels on their content to become law, without his signature being affixed to it.

“Gov. Gary Herbert let the bill pass on Wednesday without his signature,” reports KUTV.com. “He did not state a reason why.”

It’s not like other bills went unsigned by the Governor, either. Herbert apparently scratched his John Hancock on 10 other bills on Wednesday, just not the porn warning label bill.

Curious that, eh?

Maybe Herbert didn’t want people to talk or think about that resolution he signed back in 2016. Maybe he didn’t want people asking the question “Is it accurate, appropriate, or even remotely sane to call pornography a ‘public health crisis’ when you compare it to things like a virus which may well kill a quarter-million Americans in the weeks and months ahead?”

Personally, I’d like to know if the hundreds of state legislators who have voted for similar resolutions in states around the country still stand by their designation of pornography as a public health crisis or “threat” or whatever else they’ve termed it to be.

Do they have the intestinal fortitude to stand at a podium right now, in front of phalanx of news cameras and talk about the urgency of banding together to combat the public health detriments of dirty movies? Are they willing to officially rank porn as a public health crisis on a scale of, say, Snickers bar to COVID-19?

We already know the government will be offering zero help to adult entertainment businesses in their COVID-19 bailouts and small business loans; that much was made very clear in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan Application, which requires applicants to state the company “does not present live performances of a prurient sexual nature or derive directly or indirectly more than de minimis gross revenue through the sale of products or services, or the presentation of any depictions or displays, of a prurient sexual nature.”

That’s disappointing of course, but hardly surprising. Given all the shit pols in both our nation’s dominant political parties have talked about pornography, the porn industry and anything else adult entertainment related, not one of them wants to be answering questions like “Why are Hustler and Rick’s Cabaret eligible for government bailouts and loans, Senator?” They’re catching enough shit over including funding for the Kennedy Center, for fuck’s sake.

So no, I don’t expect help to come to the porn industry from the government. I have a much more modest request, just a tidbit of information about what’s to come, further down the road.

What I want to know is when the dust settles, when the sheltering in place is over and we’re getting back to something resembling ‘normal’ around this country, are state legislatures going to resume their hyperbolic screeching about porn being an urgent public health crisis, or will they be at least a little chastened by having gone through a real one?

Sadly, I suspect we already know the answer to that question.

COVID-19 image by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels