Picketing Against Porn in Mesquite: Community Values vs. “Satan’s Library”

Abstract:In the spring of 1993 the opening of Pure Pleasure Book Store in Mesquite, Nevada, met with protests from many of the citizens of Virgin Valley in southeast Nevada. The conservative and church-going community rallied around members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) who objected to what they saw as an affront to the moral standards of the community and the dangers that pornography presented to children and families. The Mesquite Chamber of Commerce formed an organization with the acronym HOME, Help Our Moral Environment, to fight for the closure of the bookstore. HOME attracted support from the citizens of the valley and neighboring communities in Utah who volunteered to serve on picket lines near the store with signs denouncing pornography. Store owners asserted their right to free speech and kept the doors open while challenging a zoning ordinance in the courts that was passed by the City of Mesquite which prohibited such businesses. As the courts deliberated, picketing continued for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for two and a half years. On March 27, 1996, in Las Vegas Federal District Court, Judge Phillip Pro ruled in favor of the City of Mesquite to close the offending business under the authority of its zoning ordinance.