PHOENIX — Hot on the heels of Arizona’s Maricopa County attorney Bill Montgomery’s warning to the porn industry to stay out of his state or face prostitution and felony charges, the Arizona Family Council is jumping on the anti-porn bandwagon.
The ultra-conservative organization, that’s reportedly controlled by a group of Mormon lawyers and aligned with the Coalition for the War on Illegal Pornography has issued a press release is support of Montgomery’s stance.
The statement reads, “Arizona Family Council is aware of the pornographic film industry’s interest to move to Arizona from California and has been working in the community, informing media, and educating lawmakers about the detriment this industry is to a community. The pornographic film industry will bring with it prostitution, drugs, and other serious criminal activity.
"Arizona already has laws in place that make the pornographic film industry illegal in our state.
"We were very pleased to hear the strong statement Maricopa County Attorney, Bill Montgomery, issued against the pornographic film industry moving to Arizona.”
The press release goes on to claim that producing porn in Arizona falls under the state’s laws against prostitution and how the legislation will be “a powerful deterrent to the pornographic film industry moving to Arizona.”
“Arizona Family Council will continue to educate and empower citizens and families in this effort to keep our communities safe.”
But as Tuscon Weekly points out, there have been no arrests for porn in Maricopa county under Montgomery’s watch and cites a 2010 Phoenix New Times article about a Arizona State University student who appeared in a reality scene for the Backroom Casting Couch website that eventually made the rounds to Pornhub.com.
The student, Elizabeth Hawkenson, identified herself by showing her school I.D. and had sex in a Scottsdale office during the filming. She ultimately kept her $33,000 scholarship despite some media rumblings but there were no reports of any criminal charges.
And the conservative anti-porn fight just may be spilling over into the streets of Arizona during the upcoming Phoenix Forum adult networking event that begins in Tempe, March 29.
Industry attorney J.D. Obenberger who recently launched his new firm, XXXLaw.com commented to XBIZ, “All timely stuff with Phoenix Forum coming. I've seen the police make their presence known at that show in the past, with a bunch of vehicles in the parking lot and cops walking all around the perimeter. Some folks said, at the time, a few years back, that there had been a feature on the local TV news about the show and they thought this might have been a response.”