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• The F.S.C., as usual, hits the nail right on the thumb. Yes, permits for adult shoots are virtually a thing of the past. But boo-hooing over the loss of revenues to the city's coffers is exactly the kind of finance-based argument that failed so utterly in the campaign against Measure B. The fact is that the half million bucks lost to the public sector of this vast metropolis is chicken feed.

  What's behind this statistic is something far more alarming. Does anyone believe for a minute that porn shooting has stopped in L.A. just because producers have stopped pulling permits? If so, I have a bridge I'd love to sell them.

  In fact, just as the majority of Measure B opponents predicted, shooting has largely gone underground, thereby transforming a legal industry with legal protections into an illicit enterprise carried on in secret and much more subject to abuses of all kinds than it was when out in the open. What this statistic really demonstrates is that Measure B was, is and has been all along prohibition disguised as regulation. This is the core argument that should have been deployed against Measure B from the start but the F.S.C. continues to whine about economic costs instead of addressing the real costs to First Amendment freedoms and the safety of performers.

  • A half-million dollars is indeed chicken feed in terms of today's budgets, and I definitely agree that this is not the be-all and end-all of arguments against Measure B, but I think at this point in time announcements like this have a place and serve a purpose.

    Local media such as the LA Times opposed Measure B based in part on this reasoning, and this FSC announcement allows the editorial pages to pat themselves on the back: they who opposed Measure B had it right! It's also clear to the press by now that AHF has seriously overreached, and for the first time we're seeing a press release from the adult industry (other than one written in response to and AHF attack) being transmuted into a news piece.