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Community Battles Porn - With YouTube

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VACAVILLE, Calif. - Smile - you're on YouTube! That's the sign people walking into a California porn shop are seeing - and it's turning many of them away in shame.

Unusual Means to a Righteous End

Jeremy White is a youth pastor - but he's also a concerned parent and resident of Vacaville, California - who's very upset about a porn shop that recently opened up in his neighborhood.

"We want to send a united effort from the community - a united message that says - we don't want this here!" White said.

White and others - mostly young people - came up with a creative means of protest: They aimed cameras at the offending shop at various times during the day with a big sign that says "Smile you're on YouTube."

"We want to hit this business in the pocket book - which we seem to be doing," White said.

"I don't agree with the type of things that it promotes. I don't agree with the image it portrays and I don't think it belongs here in Vacaville - and especially in the gateway of our community right off of a freeway," concerned Vacaville resident Althea Hendricksen said.

White says people who enter secrets boutique do run the risk of appearing on the Internet, but says their goal is really not to shame anyone.

"If you have no question of conscience and you want to shop here than by all means shop away," he said. "But if you're here for some shady reason and you see us, and that deters you from shopping here - than I don't see what the harm in that is - the shame is obviously already there."

More than half of the potential customers do not enter the store after seeing the cameras, according to White says.

He also says that those who turn around in embarrassment will not be put on the Internet.

A Bowling Alley, a Theme Park - and a Porn Shop?

The porn shop currently sits adjacent to a family restaurant, a bowling alley, and a popular children's theme park.

"I think it's a little inconsiderate for the gentleman to open such a business so close to a family-oriented place," Ryan Tron of the Nut Tree Family Theme Park said.

He added, "I think it's a little absurd, I really do. I think they need to keep it in the industry area next to a bar, next to something where you have to be a certain age in order to be around in."

The manager of "secrets boutique, Jim Lukes, insists it's a lingerie shop - although the video seems to show otherwise.

"I think that they feel that this is not an appropriate location for an adult store," Lukes said. "The realty is this is not an adult store, so it is an appropriate location for a lingerie store with great frontage here to the freeways so passer-bys can see where we're located."

White says they hope to keep the protest going until the shop either shuts down or moves to another area of town.

In the meantime, he hopes the store gets the message that a younger generation doesn't want this for the future of their city.