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Show Lehi doesn't have to be smut center Without ever seeking the distinction, Lehi City has become the last community in Utah County where adult magazines can be bought over the counter at your ordinary, or-dinary, every day convenience store. As the site of Utah Valley's only Circle K store, the city has also become the valley's smut center. The title fell to Lehi recently when Southland Corporation's Cor-poration's 7-Eleven stores decided to pull the adult magazines from the behind-the-counter magazine racks. While the 7-Eleven stores in Orem and Provo had stopped carrying the adult titles after reaching an agreement with city officials, other stores in the county still sold Penthouse and Playboy magazines to adult customers who requested it -- until the company made the decision to drop the magazines in all its stores. That leaves Lehi's lone Circle K as the main distributor of adult magazines in the county, and the store does a lot of business. According to company records, 450 copies of Penthouse Pen-thouse magazine are sold in the Lehi store each month. While Penthouse is the store's best seller, six other sex-oriented sex-oriented magazines enjoy comparable sales. In other words, close to 3,000 adult magazines are sold each month from that one small store - that's more than one for every household in Lehi. Of course, not all of the purchasers of the magazines are Lehi residents. In fact, most of them come from other Utah County communities where the sexually explicit material is not available. That makes a lot of Lehi residents uncomfortable, and with good reason. The type of material found in Penthouse Pen-thouse and magazines of its ilk is not consistent with the standards Lehi residents set for their community. To most, it is offensive, degrading and possibly dangerous. Exposure to such sexual explicit magazines contributes to a variety of societal ills, such as child sexual abuse. It's no wonder the other communities of Utah County have worked to drive the influence out of their city limits. Now Lehi City officials must work to do the same. Circle K officials say a simple ordinance prohibiting the sale of the magazines would be sufficient to stop the sale of the magazines. And that's one option for Lehi City. But such ordinances have been ruled un-constutional un-constutional time and time again, and the city doesn't want to fight that expensive battle again. The city could negotiate with Circle K to take the material out of the Lehi store, if the corporation is willing. That would be the preferred method of approaching ap-proaching the problem. However, in setting it's policy regarding the sale of the magazines, the company argues that individuals have a right to their own opinions and set of values, and that limiting access to adult magazines is comparable to limiting access to any kind of written material, good and bad. That really isn't the case. By withdrawing the material from the Circle K store, the corporation would be upholding community's standards. They would not limit anyone's access to adult magazines, since the material is readily available in Salt Lake City stores. True, the buyers will have to travel a little further to make their purchase. But at least they won't be traveling to Lehi to do it. In return, Lehi residents should be willing to show increased support for the business, since Circle K would be giving up thousands of dollars of monthly net income by refusing to sell questionable material. But Lehi would be gaining a great deal. The city would not have the infamous honor of being Utah County's last source of sexually explicit literature. That's worth the cost. |
