Minnesota- from www.startribune.com – Today a traveler reading roadside signs promising “clean rooms” at a hotel or motel is likely to think about the quality of the maid service. But the description would take on a whole new meaning if a proposed “Clean Hotels” initiative that’s meant to voluntarily turn off pay-per-view pornography takes hold in Rochester.

A group of public health advocates is asking area hotels to stop offering in-room porn, and Olmsted County commissioners will likely soon vote on a policy that would prioritize those hotels considered “clean” for county employees traveling on taxpayer money.

Both proposals are related to concerns about the linkage between pornography and sexual violence, and both have the backing of the Minnesota Health Department.

Officials hope that just like the antismoking movement, what starts small becomes big. “There is a very clear parallel,” explained Patty Wetterling, a well-known child safety advocate, former congressional candidate and now the Health Department’s director of Sexual Violence Prevention.

“This is not unlike what we went through with smoking. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, people would say, ‘I have a right to smoke — it’s my body.’ But then, we recognized there is the secondhand-smoke thing. And even though you don’t smoke, you are impacted by somebody else who smokes. It’s not unlike that with pornography.

“What we’re trying to do is to stop the demand. We know sexual violence is very complex and there is a lot of things that have to come together to actually get us to our goal,” Wetterling said.