Take my word: When you've been assigned to meet, over six hours, with staffers in 14 different legislative offices located all over the state capitol building, "Wear comfortable shoes" is the best advice you can get.
But that was just one of the tidbits to come out of our day-long training session with Free Speech Coalition's Legislative Affairs Director Kat Sunlove, who managed to round up 29 adult industry workers and fans interested enough in saving and promoting their industry to spend a day meeting with politicians to express the industry's concerns. The idea was to "put a face" on the 20,000-plus industry employees who generate part of the $31 million in state taxes flowing into California's coffers every year.
Sunlove divided the group up into eight teams to try to cover as many senators and assembly members as possible in the short time we had to get the job done. Among the better-known lobbyists this year were performers Nina Hartley, Stormy Daniels, Brittany Andrews, Inari Vachs, Anita Cannibal and Dave Cummings; Adam & Eve sales coordinator Sunny Leone (with publicist Diondra McFarren); Wicked Pictures VP Joy King; attorneys Jeffrey Douglas, Gill Sperlein, Neil Cook, Larry Kaplan and Stan Handman; sexologist Dr. Dave Hall, and an assortment of others from both the adult retail and cabaret sectors – and even an "embedded" reporter from Variety.
"I've been trying to get to this event for four years now," noted Vachs, who's retired from acting but remains involved in several industry projects. "Finally, I managed to coordinate my dance schedule so I could come, because I really support this work. It's very important to get the politicians to hear our side of things."
The event actually began on Monday, when the group gathered in a meeting room at the Sheraton Grand hotel in downtown Sacramento to hone in on what issues would be discussed with legislators the following day, and to bring first-timers up to speed on how the process works.
Thanks to the Coalition's efforts over the past eight years, we once again had no proposed laws directly affecting the industry to deal with, but research had uncovered several measures that could be of interest to us, or that related to things sexual that we felt we could support or that we would like a voice in.
Of interest this year were proposals to make fraudulent or misleading e-mail advertising a criminal offense; to target peer-to-peer file sharing of "obscene matter"; to criminalize the accidental display of hardcore video in a motor vehicle; to lower the number of DVDs a person could possess from 1,000 to 100 before they could be charged with video piracy; and to increase the age, from 12 to 14, for children to be considered victims of pedophiles who might lure them into sexual acts.
One would think that Free Speech Coalition would find all of those issues worthy of discussion, but it turned out that the hardcore-in-a-car bill had died in committee within the previous few days; the fraudulent e-mail bill seemed too harsh (was it really a good idea to put someone in jail for a year just for spamming?); and the success of the file-sharing bill would be completely dependent on the outcome of the Grokster case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sunlove, however, provided copies of all of the above bills, and each team was assigned to analyze one of them, to explain how it could affect the adult industry or its members, and to critique the bill's language and effects to see how (or even if) they could be improved. A member of each team was then selected to give a presentation on the bill, and suggestions for improvements in both presentation and tone were made by the more experienced lobbyists in the group.
For the newcomers, one portion of the day was also devoted to providing a history of the obscenity laws, and some background on some more recent developments, such as the dismissal of charges against Extreme Associates, and the federal hearings convened by Sen. Sam Brownback that will likely form the first salvo of a new administration assault on the adult industry.
One unique event was an FSC-sponsored public forum on "Today's Porn – Entertainment or Addiction" that took place Monday evening, featuring Drs. Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence, co-founders of San Francisco's Center for Sex & Culture, to present the case that porn has no ill effects for most people, and psychologist George Collins and health-care advocate Al Hernandez-Santana generally taking the "pro-addiction" position. (Look for a more comprehensive article tomorrow on this event.)
On Tuesday morning, the entire lobbying group assembled on the front steps of the capitol for a brief press conference – which turned out to be even more brief than planned owing to the fact that most news crews who normally would have attended had been called away to cover a hostage situation at a local motel. At the press conference, Free Speech Executive Director Michelle Freridge read excerpts from the Coalition's 2005 "White Paper," noting the importance of adult entertainment jobs and taxes to California's deepening fiscal crisis, and imploring state legislators to stand with the industry in resisting the expected onslaught on adult video companies, Internet content providers and strip clubs from the federal government. But once the official press conference had ended, Nina Hartley became the focus of most of the reporter's questions.
The group then split into its pre-arranged teams and headed to the appointments which Sunlove had made with the various legislators' offices. She had allowed a half-hour for each team visit, most often with staffers but occasionally with the senator or assembly member him- or herself, to discuss the industry's concerns and to answer any questions the legislator or staffer might have about the industry.
Since Sunlove had been in frequent contact with many legislative offices over the course of the previous year, staffers were expecting us and in most cases made us welcome – especially those teams that contained a porn star or two. (Last year, both legislators and staffers couldn't wait to snap pictures with porn star – and former gubernatorial candidate – Mary Carey.) Usually, they expect us to want to discuss particular bills that would affect the industry should they become law, but since Sunlove had been working with the staffers to help them draft bill language that the industry could support, the meetings on Tuesday were mostly an exchange of pleasantries, answering questions and letting the officials get to know the adult lobbyists as regular working people with the same desires and concerns as the rest of the population.
"It's important that the people in Sacramento see that members of the adult community are pretty much the same as any other citizen," Sunlove explained. "Before we started coming to the capitol regularly, I think many politicians were a bit afraid of us, as if we were not quite real and possibly even dangerous to contact. But since they've now been seeing us up close for almost a decade, they realize that we're very approachable and that we're just as concerned for the welfare of the public and the workers within our industry as anyone else who lives and works in California."
Each team had approximately eight scheduled appointments plus seven or eight "drop-bys", where no official appointment slot was available but where legislators had indicated that their staffs would meet with us if they had time. In each office, even when we couldn't arrange a sit-down, we delivered a copy of FSC's 2005 "White Paper," and invited staffers to an informal get-together that would take place Tuesday evening at our hotel.
Several legislative assistants asked for our views on the failed "porn in a car" bill – we thought the law should require that the driver show some actual intent to expose minors to sexual material before he/she could be prosecuted – and on healthcare in the industry. We had with us copies of the AIM protocols dealing with sexually transmitted diseases, and noted how well last year's HIV outbreak had been contained, with no new cases having appeared since that time.
All in all, each team must have walked a good five miles around the capitol that day, and we were all quite tired when 5 p.m. rolled around and we returned to the Sheraton for our "meet & greet" party. Several capitol workers whom we'd met over the course of the day showed up to sample the hors d'oeuvres, drink, and chat with the lobbying teams – and since, unlike their bosses, staff members aren't required to quit their government jobs and find employment elsewhere when their "term limits" kick in, the adult industry can count on seeing quite a few of the same friendly faces on its lobbying day next year as well.
