Provo Council to target racy magazine covers

PROVO — The Provo City Council is getting ready to ask store owners to cover racy magazine covers and posters.

Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to place a resolution promoting "child-appropriate standards" on the agenda for an upcoming council meeting.

The resolution has no teeth. It encourages businesses to join in the effort to reduce the display and availability of images and written material inappropriate for children. And it isn't a radical idea — 21 other Utah communities have passed similar resolutions over the past four years, according to Bountiful-based Citizens for Families.

The resolution makes no effort to list or define child-appropriate standards. Council chairman George Stewart, who initiated the effort in Provo, referred to pornography, saying that many experts consider it a national plague and more addictive than alcohol and other drugs.

He also commented on magazine covers.

"Some of us have gone into stores where the magazines aren't appropriate for children," Stewart said.

So far, there's no guarantee Provo businesses would be aware of the resolution.

"We're working on that," Stewart said after another council member asked him about distributing the resolution to businesses.

In other cities, Citizens for Families volunteers have asked businesses to cover magazines or remove posters with scantily clad models. With a resolution, they can make the case that it is the community standard.

"It's just a statement of policy," said JoAnn Hibbert Hamilton, president of Citizens for Families. "It doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. The misunderstanding comes when people think it will be used to hit businessmen over the head and force them to do things."

In Hamilton's eyes, Pleasant Grove had such a misunderstanding recently when its City Council rejected a similar proposal.

The Pleasant Grove resolution failed, Hamilton said, because a city employee added language that was too strong to a draft provided by Citizens for Families.

Most cities have passed the resolutions unanimously, including Hamilton's hometown of Bountiful, which went first in 2002. The latest to pass a child-appropriate standards resolution is Roosevelt, which adopted one in December.

"There have been no legal problems as a result of passing these," Hamilton said.