Remembering A Battle Fought For Decency in Mesquite

By CHERYL JENSEN

The Progress

Nowadays, all that is left of the Pure Pleasure Adult Book and Video store is a barren, empty lot on Eldorado Drive in Mesquite. But on that stretch of sidewalk the people of Mesquite fought a historic battle for the morality, decency and family-values of their community.

Along that sidewalk there is installed an engraved metal plaque which commemorates their efforts.
The inscription reads: At this site, a resolute stand was made for decency and innocence, for family, integrity and community safety. Here 6,000 determined neighbors of all faiths; citizens from communities in Arizona, Nevada and Utah; walked the picket line 24 hours a day for 31 consecutive months against the perverse and corrupting business of pornography. Here young mothers and grandmothers, students and retired seniors, farmers, contractors, doctors and school teachers walked shoulder to shoulder. They walked through the desert summers and the winter chill, unwilling to surrender this community to peddlers of filth. Here they walked and won.

This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of that legendary victory. It was 1993 that the battle began and it took 3 years to win. On March 28, 1996, U.S. District Judge Philip Pro ruled that Mesquite City Ordinance 103, which was adopted by the City to regulate adult bookstores, was constitutional and dissolved the preliminary injunction.

Mayor Ken Carter and Chief Murphy went to the store at 8:45 am and said, “You lost, and the store closed forever.

The battle had lasted 30 months and involved the longest running non-union picket line up to that time. Protests went on in front of the store for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by neighbors and friends who were united in the cause. They all believed “that the lifestyle and values of the porn store is inconsistent with historical community standards of our valley,” Rebecca Hartley, member of H.O.M.E. committee.

City wages battle
According to city officials at the time, Pure Pleasure had received its building permit and licensing under false pretenses in the spring of 1993.

Ken Carter, who was mayor at that time, said that the store had been presented to the city council with only vague ideas of what kind of business it would be.
“It was supposed to have been a general merchandise establishment when they got their business license,” Carter said.

But after the building inspection was done and business license was granted, the store owner covered the windows, changed the interior of the store to make it an adult bookstore, and made plans to add peep shows and live nude dancing booths.

It wasn’t until the day that the store first opened that city officials and community residents realized what the business actually was. It was an unpleasant surprise!
“I vividly remember the first night they opened,” said Carter. “(Police) Chief Murphy and I were in Las Vegas on city business when we heard it had opened as a porn store. We returned full speed with red lights flashing and went directly to the porn shop! We as a city went right to work to do what we could to close it down.”

A new ordinance was eventually drafted which did make allowance for the existence of “sexually oriented businesses” but also put tight controls by the city in place. The ordinance maintained the right of the city to regulate zoning in order to minimize the adverse secondary effects of such businesses. It listed these effects as increased crime, destruction of families, child molestation, drugs, money laundering of drug money, graffiti, prostitution and lower property values.

The owners of Pure Pleasure filed a suit in federal district court asking the judge to declare the ordinance unconsitutional. The judge granted a temporary injunction to allow the store to stay open during the legal proceedings. Those proceedings lasted two-and-a-half years.
“In the meantime, we had to just cope with it,” Carter said.

Grassroots effort grows
Of course, the people of Virgin Valley were not content to simply cope with it. So a battle was waged on an entirely different front.

Mesquite residents, as well as opponents of the store from across the region, engaged in a huge grassroots campaign against the store.

The picket line started out small on Monday, September 20, 1993. But within a few days, the community had begun to organize.

Just a few days later, a public meeting was held at Virgin Valley High School on the night of a home football game. Representatives from Pure Pleasure were in attendance to engage with the public and answer questions. Community members expressed their displeasure at the deceptive way that the business had presented itself thus far.

“You may be only after the adults in this business, but when you get finished with the adults, you’ll be after our kids, too,” said local resident Andrew Jensen at the meeting.

Within a short time, local citizens had formed a committee which they called Help Our Moral Environment (HOME). The committee went to work organizing and coordinating the picket line and signing up local residents to protest in shifts. All of these efforts were to ensure that there would be a picket line in front of the store 24 hours per day. Commitee members also educated the public about the secondary ill effects of pornography.

“We started out just as the people in the valley who began to picket the porn shop taking turns being there,” recalled Mel Peterson who was the Bishop of the Mesquite 2nd Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at that time.

Peterson said that sign-up sheets had circulated within his congregation, and other congregations in the community, to encourage Church members to sign up for four-hour shifts.

But the effort involved more than just a single church and its membership. Over time it soon became an all-community effort involving nearly every segment and every religion in town at that time. Locals of all ages and walks of life signed up to spend time on the picket line.

“We were sad to see this store coming to our town,” said Denae Rappleye who was a young mom at the time and became involved in the protests. “We had just moved to Mesquite recently and we had three children. We knew other businesses of this type would come and we wanted to stop it. We were given an opportunity to help our community. We could actually do something that would work.”
Bunkerville resident Mike Waite remembered going to an emergency meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in 1993.

“We were resolved to make a unified stand, for this was a moral issue,” Waite said of the Chamber. “Bob Frisby, who was president of the Chamber at the time, had a letter printed in the newspaper notifying the citizens of this vile store.”

“There were a few of those who wanted little done,” Waite added, “not because they supported this vile business, but because they feared that our opposition would simply advertise for them even more.”

A long, hard path
Over time, the round-the-clock schedule became more and more grueling for the local community to maintain. That is when leaders of HOME decided that they needed to send out a call throughout the region for help.

Mesquite resident Dena Hoff was one of the driving forces behind HOME. She and others began to approach church congregations and groups in St. George and the surrounding areas, warning them of the danger that the Mesquite store could bring to their own neighborhoods and communities. After all, many of the customers of the store were coming across the state line from southern Utah, she said.

“Such sad stories I heard every time I spoke somewhere,” Hoff said. “If people only realized the harm – the abuse to their families and friends – that comes from pornography because they couldn’t or wouldn’t turn their backs on its effects. It destroys!”

These calls for help were effective. Soon a fresh army of recruits from southern Utah were stepping in to help by filling timeslots in the picket line – especially the night-time slots.

During this time, Hoff was also invited to speak in various cities in the U.S. to discuss the grassroots techniques in combatting pornography that were being developed in Mesquite. These techniques became known as the “Mesquite model” at that time.

Life on the picket line
A great comraderie began to develop among the protestors. Many new friendships were forged on the picket line. There were Dutch Oven dinners and birthday and anniversary celebrations held out on the sidewalk. Some people brought board games to play. Others exchanged recipes or crocheted while they were there. A wooden shed structure was built complete with windows, a phone, lights, a swamp cooler, misters and even a microwave to provide a few comforts to protesters. In front of the shed on the sidewalk was placed an orchard heater nicknamed, “ Smoky Joe” to give some warmth on cold days.

The picket lines also produced many colorful stories. Some of the picketers occasionally stepped over the line of the sidewalk onto the Pure Pleasure property and were cited for trespassing.
“I was the first one that was trespassed…twice!” said Andrew Jensen who regularly walked the picket line with his wife, Janell. “The police came and I had to go to court and was fined $450. I paid it.”
“I had a t-shirt made with big red letters with a box around the letters – like it was stamped – that said ‘Trespassed.’” Andrew Jensen added. “People were just stepping across the line, then, so that they could get one of those shirts.”

Connie Hughes also remembers getting a trespass warning when she walked around the edge of the parking lot. Her punishment: she could not go into the store for 30 days!

Eugene Hughes, Connie’s husband, remembers getting cited for slapping an “Anti-Porn” sticker on the back bumper of a Pure Pleasure customer’s car. He was fined $100 by the local judge who also happened to be his cousin.
“He would have let me off,” Eugene said. “But I plead guilty!”

Eugene also remembered a young girl coming to the store from St. George with a temporary license tag in her car window. “Her parents were called and they were very upset,” he said. “But hopefully it helped her know the effects of her choice.”

Guy Faught fondly remembered picketing during a late night shift with Brian Hafen, a local dairy farmer at the time. “One night they called and no one was there (to picket),” Faught said. “So Brian and I spent the whole night up there. We talked a lot and we bothered some (customers of the store) who showed up with Utah State Vehicles. Letters were sent to their state departments.”

The positive things
Most of those that were interviewed about the experience admitted that it was extremely difficult to keep the momentum of the effort going. When the hot wind blew the sand around it sapped the protesters’ energy. The picketers endured the blistering heat of the summer of 1995 when, for 17 days straight, the temperature averaged 117 degrees. At other times of the year it was so cold out on the sidewalk that the picketers were shivering, even while sitting right next to “Smoky Joe.”

But all of those interviewed agreed that there were luminous moments amidst the difficulty that made it all worth it.

Delos Perkins and his wife Julie spent a good deal of time picketing outside the store. Julie said that Delos would walk the line several times a week, after finishing a work day teaching school.
“One day a customer (of the store) stopped and talked to Delos and said how addicted he was to pornography,” said Julie. “Delos talked to him and encouraged him to seek help from his religious leader.”

Kelly Jensen, the Mesquite Stake President during a portion of this time, said that he volunteered to picket from midnight to 7 am one day a week. “Then I would work all week and do it all again,” he said. “It was never a burden or duty. It was just our mission.”

Jensen recalled friends Anna Bowler and Arlene Jensen who walked the sidewalk to get their exercise every day. “I cannot remember them ever missing a day,” he said.
“We also used the time to write letters each week to the judge in Las Vegas and urge him to make a ruling in the case,” Jensen added. “He wanted to see that the community was really committed to the effort.”

Sweet Victory!
Finally, the 1996 federal court ruling came in favor of Mesquite. The local protesters could now celebrate the victory!
It was estimated that approximately 88,000 man-hours had been spent out on the picket line over the 30 months.

“It was such a great day when they (Pure Pleasure) were finally closed!” said Marianne Leavitt who spent many early mornings from 2-4 am picketing before work. “It kept getting harder and harder to fill those shifts. At the end of the picketing, I was pregnant with my fifth child. But I also remember the good times and good friends that I got to know better. I appreciate the goodness and the sacrifice of the people in our community.”

While the picketing was a challenge to the protesters, it also took a heavy toll on the Pure Pleasure store’s bottom line. During the nearly three years it took for the case to make its way through court, business at the porn shop had been decimated by the relentless picketing.

“By the time the porn store closed it was already going belly up,” said Jim Andrus, a member of the City Council at the time. “They had zero business and when the court gave the ruling to force closure, there was no fight left in them.”

Andrus commented that the community had put up a unanimous front against this foe. “The businesses in town were against it and even the casinos were opposed to it,” he said. “At night there was zero traffic up there when I would go at 1:00 am to picket.”

Local resident Steve Kelly remembered his late wife Evon who served on the HOME committee and was a regular picketer.
“It was a refreshing victory!” he said. “When the judge finally ruled, it was a complete confirmation of what my parents always taught me. They said: ‘You have to stand up, win or lose, for what you believe in, and take the fight all the way to the end.”

Kelly said that Evon did continue on living the lessons learned from the experience. “She always had a white ribbon on every car,” he recalled. “She picked up the cause and adopted it and felt the need to stand up to protect our family and home and people in this valley. She did whatever it took even though she had family responsibilities and kids at home.”

For the next generation
The impressive community effort has since paid dividends in the community down through the generations since the early 1990s.

Stephen Waite, who is now Assistant Principal of Virgin Valley High School, was still attending the high school himself when the picketing started. He vividly remembers that the case was a major priority in his home during those years.

“I remember, Delos Perkins, was our Government teacher at school,” Waite said. “He talked about it in class and taught us that there are some things that are important to defend. The government protects our right to object to a business – it is not a political statement.”

“Now that I’m a parent of seven children I am immensely grateful for those who stood and defended our valley during those years,” Waite added. “I have four boys and I am glad it is not around them. I’m also glad my three daughters are not objectified by men who are going into those kinds of stores. This event is a pivotal moment in Mesquite’s history. I believe it was a hinge point that has allowed God to bless this valley. Our youth have been blessed for it.”