Abilene: Where Porn Fought the Law and Porn Won

Not long ago, a family driving across Kansas on well-traveled Interstate 70 would encounter nothing racier than a pecan log and little more hyped than the “world’s largest prairie dog.” Then porn came to the highway.

In 2003, Lion’s Den, an Ohio-based chain of adult-toy stores, opened an outlet in the fabled cowboy town of Abilene–terminus of the great longhorn-cattle drives and boyhood home of Dwight Eisenhower. A pornucopia of videos, sheer little costumes and things that go hmm moved into the peaked-roof carcass of an old Stuckey’s, not far from a Russell Stover candy factory. A big yellow sign went up that read ADULT SUPERSTORE. An executive at the Columbus, Ohio, headquarters of Lion’s Den, who declined to be named, says the 38-store chain has found rural highways to be a good business location. “The customer likes the anonymity. They’re not going to run into their neighbor,” the executive says.

Since it opened, however, Lion’s Den and its giant billboard have been in local crosshairs. Abilene citizens launched Operation Daniel, named for the biblical prophet who was thrown into a lion’s den but somehow tamed the beasts. As lonely truckers pulled into the parking lot, protesters met them waving signs that threatened THINK AGAIN OR WE REPORT. They vowed to send the license-plate numbers of porn-purchasing drivers to corporate employers. Wal-Mart soon put out the word to its drivers to steer clear.

“The home of Ike Eisenhower was fighting back,” Phillip Cosby, a retired Army master sergeant who led the Kansas antiporn brigade, recalls proudly. Then in 2006, the state legislature enacted a law to limit the size of billboards to 40 sq. ft. and its contents to just an establishment’s name, location, phone number and operating hours. But days before it was to go into effect July 1, a federal judge in Topeka blocked the law until she could consider a challenge by Lion’s Den that the statute placed improper restraints on commercial free speech.

Somewhat surprisingly, officials in the Bible Belt state backed down. Kansas attorney general Steve Six announced he wasn’t going to fight for the law, as courts had already struck down similar statutes in Georgia, South Carolina and neighboring Missouri. Kansas’ law was identical to Missouri’s–which the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals had found unconstitutional–and it would be “fiscally irresponsible” to pursue a case with slim odds of success, Six said.

The law’s backers complain that Six caved too easily and didn’t enter evidence on pornography’s “secondary negative effects” on a community: lower property values, increased drug-trafficking and general blight. “The porn industry has deep, deep, deep pockets,” says state senator Tim Huelskamp, who believes there is a link between smut and fantasy-driven criminal behavior. “Justice shouldn’t have a price. What is the cost of one additional rape of a child, the cost of another young woman being a victim? Kansas families deserve an opportunity to drive freely down the highway without this kind of advertising.”

J. Michael Murray, a Cleveland lawyer for Lion’s Den, says it would have been “preposterous” for Six to defend a “statute doomed to failure,” noting that the case could easily have cost the cash-strapped state government $150,000 or more.

That’s exactly the problem, argues Operation Daniel’s Cosby. Adult chains can drive communities into bankruptcy if they put up a legal fight. Cosby, who also heads the Kansas City office of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, wants the state to pursue a different, more legally viable strategy: one that uses constitutionally approved zoning laws to restrict sexually oriented businesses or creates advertising limits like those on liquor and tobacco. Under this scenario, sex-store billboards would go the way of the Marlboro Man. “Someday,” says Cosby, “some attorney is going to get it.” Meanwhile, the Lion’s Den billboard looms defiantly over the prairie, tempting passersby to enter.

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