Movie Gallery, the nation’s largest brick and mortar video rental chain is facing tough financial times, having landed in bankruptcy court. The video giant is closing hundreds of stores, mostly in small, rural markets, because it can’t pay its bills on time.
Unfortunately, Movie Gallery still has hundreds of stores that quietly operate “back rooms,” some filled with hard-core pornographic videos.
But the news is not all bad. Where citizens take action, the back rooms are shutting down. This spring, under pressure from citizens, several Movie Gallery stores in Virginia closed completely. Last August, a Lancaster County group spearheaded by Fabiola Gergerich obtained 94 signatures on a petition asking the circuit court to declare a local store’s adult videos a public nuisance.
In November, a special grand jury indicted the store. According to J.W. Harmon, an assistant state attorney, the grand jury ruled “obscene” some adult videos displayed in the back room, as well as packaging of some videos in the store’s main shopping area.
In Mississippi, citizens have succeeded in closing back rooms in eleven Movie Gallery stores after meetings with mayors, police officials and local prosecutors.
Randy Sharp, director of special projects for AFA, said Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has proved to be non-existent in enforcement of state obscenity laws, thereby forcing local citizens to do his job for him.
“Attorney General Hood has disappointed our families over and over by promising to enforce our laws statewide, then recoiling inside his office without as much as a whimper,” Sharp said. “It’s a shame that our top law enforcement officer can’t get done in years what concerned citizens have been able to do in weeks – stop Movie Gallery from distributing obscenity in their towns.”
Sharp said about a dozen Mississippi stores still sell porn, and credits Hood’s inaction as the reason.
