'07 Legislature to wrestle few 'moral bills'

Critics of the Utah Legislature often charge that conservative legislators meddle with so-called "moral bills" that do little but give the state bad public relations and costly lawsuits, which the state often loses.

But so far among the several hundred pre-filed bills and bill-drafting titles for the 2007 Legislature, there are fewer moral bills than in recent years, a review by the Deseret Morning News found.

The 45-day session starts Jan. 15 and legislators have until Jan. 25 to officially introduce a bill. In addition, any legislator can ask that a bill be kept secret during its drafting. And so, there are often last-minute bills that pop up just before the bill-filing deadline.

But as of now there are just a few bills that could well bring morality debates and, possibly, lawsuits should they become law.

Perhaps the most far-reaching is HB50 by Rep. Scott Wyatt, R-Logan, a former Cache County prosecutor.

Wyatt wants to include "inappropriate violence" as a criminal offense within the Harmful Materials to Minors Act — a current state law that has over time been much debated in the Legislature.

As it now stands, any adult who intentionally gives pornography to a minor — defined as anyone younger than 18 years old — can be found guilty of a third-degree felony. The harmful material is limited to a sexual nature, with language from a U.S. Supreme Court decision using local community standards to define pornography.

Wyatt would use similar language to define inappropriate violence in "interactive video or electronic gaming" that "appeals to the morbid interest of minors" and is "patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors."

At trial, a jury or judge would decide specific instances of inappropriate violence.

Wyatt says he prosecuted a number of people for giving pornography to children when he was Cache County attorney. And from that experience he believes that only a few violent games would fall under the very restrictive language.

"It would have to be a pretty offensive video" to meet the definition, said Wyatt. Like the current harmful materials pornography law, the expanded statute would act to "temper" the video industry.

The video violence, like current pornography law, cannot have any serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for the minor, his bill says.

But already Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has warned that HB50 could be unconstitutional, perhaps a sitting duck for a successful legal challenge.

"I am going to work through a number of constitutional questions" before pushing HB50, Wyatt said. And he must satisfy himself before proceeding. A similar bill failed in the 2006 session.