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A touring film festival dedicated to amateur porn plans to stop next month in Salt Lake City — though finding someplace to show it is proving to be difficult.

Organizers of the HUMP! Film Festival touring show announced Tuesday that they would be screening on Sept. 7 at the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City.

On Wednesday, though, officials at the Salt Lake Film Society — the nonprofit arts group that runs the Tower — decided to cancel the booking, which was made as part of a program aimed at inviting diverse programming by renting theaters out at reduced rates. An outside agent made the booking, and the film society has since severed ties with that agent for unrelated reasons.

In a statement from the film society, officials stressed that the group "is proud to support freedom of expression," but "determined that it is not prudent to hold this event at a SLFS venue."

The HUMP! festival was launched in 2005 in Seattle by Dan Savage, the noted LGBT activist, writer of the "Savage Love" advice column and co-creator of the It Gets Better Project.

It started when Savage, writing in the Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger, asked readers to send him their homemade porn films. Soon his mailbox was filled with films from all races, sexual preferences, fetishes, ages and body sizes.

The event, Savage said in a news release, is "a celebration of sexual diversity" that takes viewers out of their comfort zones.

"We bill HUMP! as an amateur porn festival. But it's more than that," Savage said. "At HUMP! straight people watch gay porn, vanilla people watch kinky porn, gay people watch lesbian porn. And people laugh, they gasp, sometimes they cover their eyes. But at the end of every film, people clap and cheer. It's moving and wonderful, and newcomers don't expect it."

Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, who shepherded a resolution through this year's Utah Legislature declaring pornography a "public health crisis," said Wednesday he was pleased with the film society's decision.

"I don't know if [the festival organizers] chose Salt Lake because we're such a wonderful state, or if it's because of the resolution that I passed," said Weiler.

"Everything I try to do is to protect children from pornography," Weiler stressed. "Adults are adults and can make their own decisions."

Should a venue be found, a Utah attorney who has defended businesses against obscenity charges said city officials would find it difficult to stop the HUMP! screenings from going forward — and would likely not even try.

"For one night, I cannot imagine the city of Salt Lake would be motivated to do anything about it," said Andrew McCullough, an attorney practicing in Midvale who is the Libertarian Party's candidate for Utah attorney general.

McCullough said governments are barred from "prior restraint" — banning something before it's been showed. Technically, police could watch the first showing, get a judge to deem the show obscene and have the second show canceled.

However, "it's not really worth the effort," McCullough said, adding that if the city did try to shut it down, he would be in attendance to offer legal advice.

Picking a venue that doesn't serve alcohol would allow organizers to steer clear of many of the state's laws against objectionable material.

"They're not going to be able to show [HUMP!] at Brewvies," McCullough said.

Brewvies Cinema Pub is in the midst of a legal tussle with the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, after the DABC cited the theater this spring for showing the R-rated "Deadpool" while serving booze.

The HUMP! Film Festival has grown in the past decade, drawing tens of thousands of moviegoers every year in Seattle and on the road. The event also inspired the 2009 comedy "Humpday," about two college friends (Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard) who drunkenly vow to make a film for the Seattle festival. "Humpday" director Lynn Shelton won a special jury prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

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Here is the complete text of the Salt Lake Film Society's statement:

"The Salt Lake Film Society is the home of independent film in Utah and is proud to support freedom of expression. As a service to our community, the Salt Lake Film Society sometimes rents our facilities to filmmakers and festivals at below-market rates. Our venue access program is designed to increase the diversity of offerings available to the Utah community. The HUMP! Film Festival has sought use of the Tower Theater on a date in September, but the Society has determined that it is not prudent to hold this event at a SLFS venue."