By Gudrun Schultz
KANSAS CITY, Missouri, April 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A federal judge has upheld a law forbidding advertising for sexually oriented businesses along highways, reported the Associated Press on Saturday.
The law prohibits signage for sexual merchandise from being posted within a mile of the highway. Sexual content must be limited to less than ten percent of a billboard for any business.
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The owner of a sex-merchandise chain, John Haltom, challenged the law in court last year. Haltom, who sells lingerie, sex toys and adult videos in his 10 stores, said the law limits his right to free commercial speech.
He also complained that while he utilizes between 10 and 25 percent of his billboards for displaying sexually oriented material, the law was too broad if his stores were considered adult businesses.
Justice Gary Fenner, who has upheld the law against previous challenges, disagreed, saying the law bans advertising for sexually oriented merchandise only, so Haltom could post ads for non-sexual items in his store.
In August of last year researchers from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and from Yale in Connecticut found that erotic images on billboard advertising have such an impact on drivers’ emotions that a brief moment of blindness may follow, enough to constitute a traffic hazard.
The phenomenon, known as “emotion-induced blindness” occurred with more frequency when the erotic images were placed close together, in volunteer testing.
“We observed that people failed to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images [such as violent or erotic images],” said David Zald who headed the study.
The blindness typically lasted several tenths of a second, enough to cause concern for drivers in heavy urban traffic where such images are usually posted.
Missouri’s law was implemented in 2004. State Sen. Matt Bartle, who initiated the legislation, told the AP he was confident the law would survive, but said he expected further challenges against it.
“The porn shops are tenacious and have deep pockets,” he said.
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
Erotic Billboard Images a Traffic Hazard Study Shows
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/aug/05081504.html