In a backroom at Boone Tavern yesterday, a group of businessmen and -women sat down for a working lunch. About 30 owners of adult video stores and gentlemen's clubs from across Missouri gathered to coordinate their response to what they're calling a war on the state's erotic services industry.
A bill now sitting on Gov. Jay Nixon's desk would make it illegal for dancers to perform fully nude in clubs, and this, club owners say, would put them out of business. The bill would also force patrons to stay 6 feet away from performers and would prevent strip clubs from selling alcohol or staying open past midnight. Video stores with pornographic booths would have to keep them open and within eyesight of a clerk, and no new adult businesses will be allowed within 1,000 feet of a church, school or day-care under the proposed law. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee's Summit, is set to take effect in August.
The mood at the meeting was grim. The club owners estimated 3,000 jobs statewide are on the line. "I guess I could reopen as a comedy club," grumbled one Kansas City-based strip club owner.
"With the girls dancing fully clothed, it will be a comedy club," chimed in another.
Two of the most vocal advocates fighting the law are Gene Gruender and Nellie Symm-Gruender, owners of Passions, a video and novelty chain with a store on Old 63. Gene is a pony-tailed former electrician and sailboat enthusiast who says he never set foot in an adult store until he owned one. Nellie is a registered nurse who sometimes lectures on domestic violence. Both are tenacious advocates.
"We're going to fight this tooth and nail because it's wrong," Gene Gruender said in an interview earlier in the week. "I spent 10 years in the Army, and the whole idea was to protect our rights. There's no way in hell I'm just going to roll over and let them take anything."
Speaking in their office, where vibrating sex toys and X-rated posters provide the decoration, the Gruenders said they have spent more than a month's worth of time in the past year traveling, testifying and raising money to oppose the bill. They've flown in experts to testify at hearings and bombarded legislators with data contesting charges that adult businesses lead to drug use, sex crimes or declining property value.
"It's pretty sad when the two of us can walk down the halls of the Capitol and probably one-third of the legislators know us by name," Gene Gruender said.
The Gruenders aren't new to this type of fight. They were part of a lawsuit filed in 2004 that led to the reversal of a law banning sexually oriented billboards along Interstate 70. Back then, the Gruenders and another store owner were paid about $120,000 for their legal fees after the law was struck down.
But this time, the terrain is even tougher. Despite their best efforts at persuasion, few state senators or House members voted against the bill. "Nobody wants to go on record voting for porn," Gene Gruender said.
I contacted Nixon's office to ask whether there was any chance of a veto and was told by spokesman Scott Holste that SB 586, like all bills, will receive a "thorough and comprehensive review." Nixon must take action by mid-July or the bill automatically becomes law.
The measure has a vocal block of supporters. I spoke by phone to John Putnam of Carthage, a Jasper County Republican Party chairman whose family has been in the lumber business for 100 years. He and others in the area have grown disgusted by the adult theaters and coin-operated "arcades" proliferating along Interstate 44. He pointed to a gruesome incident in Jackson County where a man brought his 14-year-old stepdaughter to a theater and allowed men to rape her.
"This is expanding," he said. "We're growing from video arcades where mostly men go in and play with themselves, and now they're meeting there and hooking up with other people, and it's expanding into group sex. We just don't think it's healthy for our community. People drive down I-44 and wonder what kind of a sex-trade state Missouri is."
Putnam has even done some detective work visiting some of the offending shops during off hours and taking photographs of message boards and empty sex rooms, which he posts online as evidence that the places are havens for anonymous hook-ups. Two years ago, Putnam enlisted the help of state Rep. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, who joined Bartle and sponsored the House version of this bill.
"I'm pretty much a libertarian," Putnam said. "But I do think if one person's action infringes on another, that's where it should stop. We require tattoo parlors to use sterile needles and health food workers to wear hair nets and latex gloves. That's all we're asking for here. These owners need to take some responsibility."
But the adult business owners think the bill is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. They say their establishments have excellent safety records, are generally monitored by 24-hour surveillance and have good relationships with local law enforcement. When counties or municipalities want to restrict adult businesses locally, they can do so. A state law is a blunt instrument, they say.
"We're one of the most highly regulated businesses in the state outside of nuclear power," said Mike Ocello, owner of several clubs in Sauget, Ill., and around the country.
Ocello's group, the Association of Club Executives, is planning a legal challenge to the bill, should it become law. They've seized on the fact that all legislation has a fiscal note attached to it outlining the impact to the state budget. ACE says the note attached to this bill -- $100,000 -- grossly underestimates the loss in sales tax, income withholding and other costs to the state. They claim that if adult businesses are restricted as proposed, at least 60 percent of them would close, costing the state about
$2.7 million in lost sales tax and $720,000 in lost state withholding taxes and would put about 1,800 people out of work. "If I came to this state with a new business that would generate that number of jobs and that revenue, they'd give me a key to the state," Ocello said. "Instead they want to put all these people out of work."
The group has pooled money in a legal defense fund and plans to ask a circuit court to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the law from taking effect in August. If that doesn't work, they'll plan a constitutional challenge to the law. Judging from yesterday's meeting, this fight has only just begun. June 4, 2010 lakeexpo.com
America is learning the meaning of despotism.