The chain which owns the Kum and Go convenience stores (and, yes, that is the name of the stores) has bowed to pressure from a citizens' group and will drop adult magazines from its 313 stores.
Last month, conservative citizens' activists met to organize protest pressure against stores selling adult materials, but the president of the Iowa Family Policy Center says the Kum and Go decision was not knee-jerk. "It's something they'd been talking about for years and years," says Chuck Hurley.
But another campaign organizer says the Kum and Go store in his area had indeed bowed to the pressure.
Hurley and Kim Gordon of Concerned Women For America met with the owners of the Kum and Go chain last week, learning from the company's attorney that the decision to pull the adult magazines was made.
Krause-Gentle Corporation, the owners, have not commented yet, but reports indicate that Kum and Go clerks are saying some of the stores have already pulled the adult titles.
But the Kum and Go decision and the organized campaign against the materials has the Iowa chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union worried. Ben Stone, the chapter's executive director, says the concern is whether information can be limited by coercion. He says it is troubling when companies make decisions based on political fear rather than sound business judgment or sincere conviction.
