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It’s beginning to seem like I timed my FBI porn blog pretty well. Just the next day the Oregon Supreme Court hands down its ruling on the live sex shows issue. I had been planning to hold off on it but when O’Reilly devoted a whole show to it yesterday, I knew I had to jump in. I liked that O’Reilly seemed upset with the ruling, but did have in Judge Napolitano, his sometimes stand in, who agreed with the ruling. Napolitano did make one major error however. His position was that you could not outright ban this sort of thing, but that zoning as to place and access at the local level could restrict it. With regard to Oregon, this is not true, local zoning of this sort of thing is not permitted as I understand it and a ballot measure to allow such restrictions was recently defeated.
Here’s the part of this entire thing that cranks me: the inability of those who dislike such things to pin down a reason for disallowing them. I think there is a little bit of a misunderstanding; you can’t ban a business because you find it annoying. There are plenty of businesses that I find far more annoying than sex clubs. I would hate to have a muffler shop open next-door, too noisy. A tattoo parlor would be bad, it would probably lower my property value every bit as much as a strip club. How about a retirement community? I sure wouldn’t like that. With its ugly track housing with no hope of the owners doing improvements, depressed property values are assured.
What about some other arguments? Moral decay? Hard to take this one seriously when every kid seems to be playing video games featuring mass murder and torture. It encourages lack of respect for women? Seems good on its face but isn’t it disrespectful to say that women are too stupid to make there own decisions about being strippers? Are we going to start banning clothing as well? I’ve seen plenty of it ( t shirts that say “daddy’s girl” clearly intended for the 13 and 14 year old set) doesn’t that encourage disrespect for women? Do these clubs create a dangerous and crime ridden environment around them? Actually the local newspapers around here did check on that and found that it was quite the contrary, regular bars had far greater instances of police calls than strip clubs. “Well I just don’t want my kids seeing that”. Good, throw a blindfold on them. Take a detour. What the hell is there to see anyway? Usually these clubs have featureless fronts with a line drawing sign that’s pretty much the same as the chrome nude women on trucker mud flaps. Besides, I don’t want my kids seeing a slaughterhouse, drunks emerging from a bar, or poor people lined up at the plasma clinic because donating blood is how they make money for drugs. That doesn’t mean I get to ban slaughterhouses, bars, or blood clinics. It might mean I can zone them in a reasonable manner, but that’s all. The problem is that zoning laws have been abused so much in the past with respect to adult businesses. Reasonable adult business zoning, to me, sounds about as sure a promise as “reasonable” gun laws. Sorry if I don’t trust you.
When I was a kid I lived in Manhattan. Working class Italians and artists populated Greenwich Village at that time. I lived in a brownstone that opened onto a common courtyard where I would run around and play with the other kids. Mostly I would spend time thinking about Donna Spadanicci because she went to Catholic school, had that hot uniform and was a few years older than me. Eventually the owner sold the courtyard and an Armenian restaurant opened. Lust for Donna and childhood frolicking was rapidly replaced by odd kitchen smells and the occasional rat infestation. It totally depressed me but in the end that’s life. You have to put up with other people, even if they are doing something obnoxious but legal. If you don’t like it, the first move should not be to make it illegal. You might find very quickly that things you like are obnoxious and quickly ruled illegal as well.
It’s beginning to seem like I timed my FBI porn blog pretty well. Just the next day the Oregon Supreme Court hands down its ruling on the live sex shows issue. I had been planning to hold off on it but when O’Reilly devoted a whole show to it yesterday, I knew I had to jump in. I liked that O’Reilly seemed upset with the ruling, but did have in Judge Napolitano, his sometimes stand in, who agreed with the ruling. Napolitano did make one major error however. His position was that you could not outright ban this sort of thing, but that zoning as to place and access at the local level could restrict it. With regard to Oregon, this is not true, local zoning of this sort of thing is not permitted as I understand it and a ballot measure to allow such restrictions was recently defeated.
Here’s the part of this entire thing that cranks me: the inability of those who dislike such things to pin down a reason for disallowing them. I think there is a little bit of a misunderstanding; you can’t ban a business because you find it annoying. There are plenty of businesses that I find far more annoying than sex clubs. I would hate to have a muffler shop open next-door, too noisy. A tattoo parlor would be bad, it would probably lower my property value every bit as much as a strip club. How about a retirement community? I sure wouldn’t like that. With its ugly track housing with no hope of the owners doing improvements, depressed property values are assured.
What about some other arguments? Moral decay? Hard to take this one seriously when every kid seems to be playing video games featuring mass murder and torture. It encourages lack of respect for women? Seems good on its face but isn’t it disrespectful to say that women are too stupid to make there own decisions about being strippers? Are we going to start banning clothing as well? I’ve seen plenty of it ( t shirts that say “daddy’s girl” clearly intended for the 13 and 14 year old set) doesn’t that encourage disrespect for women? Do these clubs create a dangerous and crime ridden environment around them? Actually the local newspapers around here did check on that and found that it was quite the contrary, regular bars had far greater instances of police calls than strip clubs. “Well I just don’t want my kids seeing that”. Good, throw a blindfold on them. Take a detour. What the hell is there to see anyway? Usually these clubs have featureless fronts with a line drawing sign that’s pretty much the same as the chrome nude women on trucker mud flaps. Besides, I don’t want my kids seeing a slaughterhouse, drunks emerging from a bar, or poor people lined up at the plasma clinic because donating blood is how they make money for drugs. That doesn’t mean I get to ban slaughterhouses, bars, or blood clinics. It might mean I can zone them in a reasonable manner, but that’s all. The problem is that zoning laws have been abused so much in the past with respect to adult businesses. Reasonable adult business zoning, to me, sounds about as sure a promise as “reasonable” gun laws. Sorry if I don’t trust you.
When I was a kid I lived in Manhattan. Working class Italians and artists populated Greenwich Village at that time. I lived in a brownstone that opened onto a common courtyard where I would run around and play with the other kids. Mostly I would spend time thinking about Donna Spadanicci because she went to Catholic school, had that hot uniform and was a few years older than me. Eventually the owner sold the courtyard and an Armenian restaurant opened. Lust for Donna and childhood frolicking was rapidly replaced by odd kitchen smells and the occasional rat infestation. It totally depressed me but in the end that’s life. You have to put up with other people, even if they are doing something obnoxious but legal. If you don’t like it, the first move should not be to make it illegal. You might find very quickly that things you like are obnoxious and quickly ruled illegal as well.
posted by R Huse at 8:10 AM
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