Utah Senator Wants To Revive The State's 'Porn Czar' Office To Combat The Threat Of Women's Magazines

Todd Weiler, a state Senator in Utah, has appeared on our pages before. When last we checked in with the good senator, he was quite oddly attempting to purge his notoriously prudish state from the dire threat of pornography. His plan was more than a bit heavy-handed in that it centered on mandating porn-filtering software on all smartphones under his stated theory that "A cell phone is basically a vending machine for pornography." This tragic misunderstanding by a sitting state senator of what a phone is and exactly what its primary functions are aside, government mandates that infringe on free and legal expression are kind of a no-no in these here secular United States. Even setting constitutional questions aside, attempts like these are immediately confronted by the obstreperous demands from the public for a definition of exactly what constitutes "pornography."

Well, for Senator Weiler, it appears we may have something of an answer. See, Weiler has more recently decided to try to revive Utah's long-defunct Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman position, or "porn czar", that Utah once filled but has left vacant for the better part of two decades.

For the past 14 years, Utah has made do without a "porn czar." The position-officially known as the "Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman"-has been vacant since 2003, though it was never officially eliminated. Now state Sen. Todd Weiler (R-Woods Cross) may revive it, even as the Utah attorney general suggests legislators strike it from the books. Weiler suggests that an obscenity ombudsman could focus on things like providing guidance to retailers. But the position also has the power to monitor and punish business owners for daring to display magazines that mention sex.

If all of that seems so broad a mandate that non-pornographic magazines might accidentally be caught up in the fray, you're wrong. Those innocent magazines aren't collateral damage at all, in fact, but rather the primary targets apparently of Weiler's ire.

Weiler's definition of porn is apparently broad enough to encompass mainstream women's magazines. Weiler "says he became convinced that the obscenity and pornography complaints office may be needed because of an ad campaign attacking Cosmopolitan magazine as illegal porn," The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

"I've received some complaints...that stores are selling Cosmo at eye level to a child," he told the Tribune. "There's no blinder rack on it, even though we have some blinder rack language in the state code."

Cosmo is and has been the butt of many a joke, but pornography it most certainly is not. And, jokes aside, the magazine is a source and platform for women to discuss and learn about both women's general and sexual health. Painting a porn target on a magazine such as that says everything about why these sorts of efforts must be defeated. No matter how uncomfortable it might make a Utah state senator for women to be real live human beings with body functions about which they need to learn, and no matter how distasteful that senator might find women discussing their health and sex lives in print, it should be plainly obvious that Cosmo is not remotely pornographic by any traditional understanding.