How would you defend a strip club? I can think of reasons economically to do so. I can even think of reasons ethically to do so. But what would you see as reasons to keep a strip club open (that at least can be said out loud in a court or city council chamber)?
Quantify how many employees will lose their jobs. Then, how much property tax the clubs pay, how much sales tax, etc. Then, with that money removed from the city budget, estimate how many teachers, police officers, and firefighters will have to be laid off.
A side note may be to add that money and those jobs to a neighboring city, and suggest that the citizens of your town will now be making a longer drive to spend their money elsewhere.
1) Take four single moms from the club (three dancers and a waitress). Have them talk about that the club lets them work, spend time with their kids, and add in that they don't need the public dole (city money) for daycare and rent.
2) Bartenders talk about how much booze is sold, therefore increasing the public dole through alcohol taxation.
3) Have the owner read off a list of his employees, from dancers to bartenders, to waitresses, to kitchen personnel, to valets. Close the club, and this is how many people you'll have on the public teat.
First of all any government building is a den of sin, bribes, lies, double talk, backroom deals, etc. secondly there is a constitutional right Freedom of Speech. And finally find out how few so-called respectable businesses hire single mothers and if they do do they pay well?
I wouldn't. I'd defend them to the courts. A City Council is the adult industry's worst enemy, generally. When you're seeking rights for the few which are rights not necessarily readily espoused by the many, the executive and legislative branches won't necessarily be in your favor. But the judicial can be.
The arguments that I've seen, in favor of strip clubs, run along the lines of free expression, First Amendment, and the like. I find that kind of questionable at best. The state interest in promoting free expression in a democracy, is to allow varying veiwpoints about the best way to run the country, to always be in the eye of the voting public.
But the girl doesn't contribute to that state interest at all. Since when is an under-educated eighteen-year-old, who is denuding herself indoors in a paid parlor, and perhaps gyrating on a stranger's lap, providing any form of expression which would be positive contribution to a politically free nation where various opinions must always have access to public discourse and the "free market of ideas"? If we shut her up, and prevent mom and pop from understanding her personal preference for the best form of gyrating on my willie, does that risk changing the free nature of Congressional debate into some weird Hanoverian monarchy again? I don't think so.
She's not in a "free" market, not her expression. It goes out only if she gets cash. She's in a PAID and VERY RESTRICTIVE market. The fellows at Marble Arch and on the Washington Mall can mouth off whether or not anyone sticks a buck in their garter. And she's not in a market of ideas, either. "Hi honey, where do you stand on immigration control?" "You can determine my position by means of observation of my left nipple." "Thank you sweetie. And what about the new ad-valorem tax increase for public schools?" "Just check out my shaved pussy next song, it's all in there. But I won't let you know my whole opinion unless you give me a $20." I don't think so.
So, I don't find the First Amendment argument very compelling, in favor of strip clubs. The arguments I find more interesting, and more effective, are these:
1. Business interests. Generally, the cash, and the right to make cash, tend to sway America's Right Wing voters a good deal. After all, the Republican party is the party of limited government in favor of a laissez-faire economy, isn't it? So, if you hit a few Bible-thumpers with a good solid "why do you hate the free market so much?" they at least get caught up short for a moment.
2. Religious freedom. Obviously, you won't CONVINCE someone to join in with pro-strip-club fervor, if he or she's a member of an anti-adult-businesses cult, such as the Baptist, Catholic, Sunni, Tao, Eastern Orthodox, Shi'ite, Presbyterian, Dutch Reform, or any other Christian or Moslem or Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist religion. But at least you can shut 'em up and make your point, if you indicate that your RELIGIOUS VALUES are not the same as theirs. It won't get you far with them. But it will get you farther with a court, I think. It might even get a bit of play in a City Council, depending on the municipality.
It all depends on how you put it to them. Connecting their objection to adult business, with their personal religious preferences, is the first step in the reasoning, to make a clear syllogism. But it might not be the best first step in the conversation. Don't just jump in there with, "Hey, get yer religion outta my bedroom!" They won't follow your import or, even if they do, they're still unlikely to listen much. Instead, I suggest, you should start with a story about how free and relaxed America is, about such nebulous things as "other people's values" and "respecting the choices of others." From there you can step gingerly into the theology.
3. It's the economy stupid. Others on this thread have made good points about jobs, etc.. Be careful with this argument, though, because for every job program there's an alternative. A hooker on the streetcorner may be a gal paying for three kids' private school educations, in your mind, but she's a gal who could be re-trained to work a computer keypunch in the minds of anti-prostitution zealots. So, even if you've got a good economic argument, there's often a rhetorical trick which seems, to the opposition, like a quick and easy way around your version of the economy and right back to their version of it. "We like getting her a job so she can make money and be independent. We just insist on it being a job which WE APPROVE OF." If they phrase it wrong, it's really easy to point out that what they're saying isn't, "We like getting her a job so she can make money and be independent"; rather, what they're saying is more like, "We don't like getting her to be independent at all, we like controlling her and making her work for us and being our minion." But if they don't do you the favor of phrasing it wrong, you'll never be able to point out their hypocrisy to them. So, I tend away from the economic arguments, just because they'll be complicated enough that most people wielding as anti-strip-club weapons will know so little about them that they'll never understand how effectively you've just skewered them with their very arguments.
4. Negating their data and assumptions. I like to often just listen in a vacuum, assume the void, nirvana, oooh. Like, "OK, so tell me what's wrong with strip clubs?" You'll get various points. Then I reject each point, bit by bit.
The ancillary-effects doctrine has been proven utterly false, for example. There is not necessarily more drug dealing, or more illegal prostitution, or more child rape, or more domestic violence, where there is free access to adult businesses. Those crimes go up in areas where there's economic destitution and police ineffectiveness, not in areas where there are closed buildings within which naked titties are displayed. If the ancillary-effects notion were accurate, then every time I got lucky and took a hot chick home from a bar and banged her in my apartment, then merely because her tits had been naked at my house, a little bit of cocaine would drift down from the sky and land on the sidewalk outside my apartment and someone would try to sell it. And if I got really lucky and had a threesome? Kaboom, a whole kilo would drop, and a gang-banger would evanesce into being directly from the aether and shoot the dealer. Right there on my sidewalk. Because of naked tits. :) Obviously, it doesn't work that way. So, it's pretty easy to play with the ancillary-effects doctrine if they bring it up.
If they try to use the "NIMBY" thing, ask them why they hate America. He says: "Not In My Back Yard." You say: "What, no niggers spics or jews in your back yard? Oh, I'm sorry, you mean no STRIPPERS. I get it. But what if they're white strippers? What if they're white college educated strippers? What if they're white male Anglo-Saxon strippers?" :) Generally the "my turf" argument is an anti-American argument, because we have the national notion of private property rights. When you buy your house, you do NOT buy dominion over the rest of the neighborhood. Remind them of that, then ask them why they hate private property, what are they, communnissss?
Oh, and I love it when they say they'll pray for me. I say how nice of them, and I'll slaughter a goat for them too, and would they share a curl of their hair right now so I can burn it for the ritual?
No, seriously, the pick-their-reasoning-apart method is good for a City Council because it leads to pointing out their illegality. By asking them to tell what it is that they assume is wrong about an adult business you're asking them to point out whatever it is that they'll make into a supposedly compelling state interest that would give them the right to regulate adult business. What they dislike about it, is their reason for limiting it. And then you can skewer whatever reason they pick, and remind them that we don't make things in America illegal just for the fun of it.
When in doubt, clothe yourself in the flag. It's not about single moms, jobs, the economy (though it is, if you can control the specifics); it's not about prostitutes and drug dealers (those are unsubstantiated assumptions, lies along the lines of the welfare queens Reagan invented); it's about FREEDOM.
"mere nudity" is protected by the 1st ammendment according to Jenkins v. Georgia (1974). You could then argue that nudity in a public club would be protected based on Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville FL (1975). Plus, there is freedom to assemble in said club.
The local laws in my area generally restrict clubs based on alcohol or zoning. Nudity = no alcohol sales or No nudity = alcohol ok.
Kansas City, Kansas successfully shut down all adult entertainment in the early 90's by having the establishments declared a "public nuisance" by a court. This was after a fairly brief period of raids that netted illegal drugs, and various other illegal activities. As I recall, almost every club's ownership had ancillary charges brought against them including income tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering, bribery of public officials, and illegal parking.
Short of the KCK approach, I'm not sure how you could ban a business type that is already in existence without facing a very expensive challenge in the courts - the cost of which might not be a very good use of the taxpayers' dollars.
Cut back on strip clubs or what you can do in them and it hurts the convention business. Conventioneers like to spend their free time doing what they can't do or don't want to get caught doing in their own back yard.
I was in an industry years ago that kept moving it's convention around. At one point the attendance was so bad is was in danger of being shut down. The next year they moved it to Sin City. Attendance skyrocketed and the show stayed there ever since.
Well, to start with, does this club deserve to stay open? Have they operated in a responsible manner. Has there been any record of underage performers, drug use, violence outside or inside the club? Do they handle their own security well? Do they cooperate with law enforcement whenever asked and kept their place well maintained? Do they draw a clientelle that is well mannered and not unruly folks like bikers and gangbangers?
They do? Well there you have the basis of your presentation. Without saying so imply that there are a lot of other club owners in other places that run that other kind of place and who knows what might move in if they got rid of their responisbly managed adult nightclub.
"The state interest in promoting free expression in a democracy, is to allow varying veiwpoints about the best way to run the country, to always be in the eye of the voting public."
There is no Constitutional requirement for the speech/expression to be political, or about the best way to run the country, or to be a positive contribution to anything. There is no requirement at all, except the one requiring the government to keep their hands off.
In addition, artistic expression has long been held to fall under the protection of the 1st Amendment.
The *courts* have since ruled that incitement to violence or fraud are not considered free speech/expression, along with some other things, but beyond that, it's freedom expression, not "freedom of expression on appropriate topics."
Gee, I guess the strip club owners just never thought to play the constitutional angle before, huh? What a bunch of idealism. If city council wants to shut them down, they'll shut 'em down.
How would I defend strip clubs? Easy, point out what the girls make per year. Most decent clubs the girls make well over $50K and a lot of times $100K or more a year. Strip clubs generate more high-paying jobs than the government does. Tell that to the City Council.
Most people don't want to defend strip clubs, they just want to visit them. It could be that many voters don't want the local city council to stamp out their rights to go to legal establishments just because one or two city council members has some moral high ground that he or she feels like defending or promoting.
No (or very little) difference between "the courts have ruled that ..." (such-and-so) and "the constitution says" (other-such-and-so) as far as current laws would go. I don't really mind whether the prohibitions are court-made or constitutional, they're still law, thanks to the common-law system of precedent, etc.. Judges (at upper-tier and sometimes even middle-tier appellate courts) ALWAYS are "making law" whenever they create a holding about law. Subsequent to them making it, it's the law of that jurisdiction.
Gee, our former mayor in Detroit (the one and only Kwame Kilpatrick, now serving time) LMAO He had no problems with strip clubs except for that one dancer he allegedly had murdered so she wouldn't squeal on him. Cities need mayors like that for strip clubs to flourish. Of course, he'll steal you blind like Kwame did, but oh well.
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A side note may be to add that money and those jobs to a neighboring city, and suggest that the citizens of your town will now be making a longer drive to spend their money elsewhere.
2) Bartenders talk about how much booze is sold, therefore increasing the public dole through alcohol taxation.
3) Have the owner read off a list of his employees, from dancers to bartenders, to waitresses, to kitchen personnel, to valets. Close the club, and this is how many people you'll have on the public teat.
The arguments that I've seen, in favor of strip clubs, run along the lines of free expression, First Amendment, and the like. I find that kind of questionable at best. The state interest in promoting free expression in a democracy, is to allow varying veiwpoints about the best way to run the country, to always be in the eye of the voting public.
But the girl doesn't contribute to that state interest at all. Since when is an under-educated eighteen-year-old, who is denuding herself indoors in a paid parlor, and perhaps gyrating on a stranger's lap, providing any form of expression which would be positive contribution to a politically free nation where various opinions must always have access to public discourse and the "free market of ideas"? If we shut her up, and prevent mom and pop from understanding her personal preference for the best form of gyrating on my willie, does that risk changing the free nature of Congressional debate into some weird Hanoverian monarchy again? I don't think so.
She's not in a "free" market, not her expression. It goes out only if she gets cash. She's in a PAID and VERY RESTRICTIVE market. The fellows at Marble Arch and on the Washington Mall can mouth off whether or not anyone sticks a buck in their garter. And she's not in a market of ideas, either. "Hi honey, where do you stand on immigration control?" "You can determine my position by means of observation of my left nipple." "Thank you sweetie. And what about the new ad-valorem tax increase for public schools?" "Just check out my shaved pussy next song, it's all in there. But I won't let you know my whole opinion unless you give me a $20." I don't think so.
So, I don't find the First Amendment argument very compelling, in favor of strip clubs. The arguments I find more interesting, and more effective, are these:
1. Business interests. Generally, the cash, and the right to make cash, tend to sway America's Right Wing voters a good deal. After all, the Republican party is the party of limited government in favor of a laissez-faire economy, isn't it? So, if you hit a few Bible-thumpers with a good solid "why do you hate the free market so much?" they at least get caught up short for a moment.
2. Religious freedom. Obviously, you won't CONVINCE someone to join in with pro-strip-club fervor, if he or she's a member of an anti-adult-businesses cult, such as the Baptist, Catholic, Sunni, Tao, Eastern Orthodox, Shi'ite, Presbyterian, Dutch Reform, or any other Christian or Moslem or Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist religion. But at least you can shut 'em up and make your point, if you indicate that your RELIGIOUS VALUES are not the same as theirs. It won't get you far with them. But it will get you farther with a court, I think. It might even get a bit of play in a City Council, depending on the municipality.
It all depends on how you put it to them. Connecting their objection to adult business, with their personal religious preferences, is the first step in the reasoning, to make a clear syllogism. But it might not be the best first step in the conversation. Don't just jump in there with, "Hey, get yer religion outta my bedroom!" They won't follow your import or, even if they do, they're still unlikely to listen much. Instead, I suggest, you should start with a story about how free and relaxed America is, about such nebulous things as "other people's values" and "respecting the choices of others." From there you can step gingerly into the theology.
3. It's the economy stupid. Others on this thread have made good points about jobs, etc.. Be careful with this argument, though, because for every job program there's an alternative. A hooker on the streetcorner may be a gal paying for three kids' private school educations, in your mind, but she's a gal who could be re-trained to work a computer keypunch in the minds of anti-prostitution zealots. So, even if you've got a good economic argument, there's often a rhetorical trick which seems, to the opposition, like a quick and easy way around your version of the economy and right back to their version of it. "We like getting her a job so she can make money and be independent. We just insist on it being a job which WE APPROVE OF." If they phrase it wrong, it's really easy to point out that what they're saying isn't, "We like getting her a job so she can make money and be independent"; rather, what they're saying is more like, "We don't like getting her to be independent at all, we like controlling her and making her work for us and being our minion." But if they don't do you the favor of phrasing it wrong, you'll never be able to point out their hypocrisy to them. So, I tend away from the economic arguments, just because they'll be complicated enough that most people wielding as anti-strip-club weapons will know so little about them that they'll never understand how effectively you've just skewered them with their very arguments.
4. Negating their data and assumptions. I like to often just listen in a vacuum, assume the void, nirvana, oooh. Like, "OK, so tell me what's wrong with strip clubs?" You'll get various points. Then I reject each point, bit by bit.
The ancillary-effects doctrine has been proven utterly false, for example. There is not necessarily more drug dealing, or more illegal prostitution, or more child rape, or more domestic violence, where there is free access to adult businesses. Those crimes go up in areas where there's economic destitution and police ineffectiveness, not in areas where there are closed buildings within which naked titties are displayed. If the ancillary-effects notion were accurate, then every time I got lucky and took a hot chick home from a bar and banged her in my apartment, then merely because her tits had been naked at my house, a little bit of cocaine would drift down from the sky and land on the sidewalk outside my apartment and someone would try to sell it. And if I got really lucky and had a threesome? Kaboom, a whole kilo would drop, and a gang-banger would evanesce into being directly from the aether and shoot the dealer. Right there on my sidewalk. Because of naked tits. :) Obviously, it doesn't work that way. So, it's pretty easy to play with the ancillary-effects doctrine if they bring it up.
If they try to use the "NIMBY" thing, ask them why they hate America. He says: "Not In My Back Yard." You say: "What, no niggers spics or jews in your back yard? Oh, I'm sorry, you mean no STRIPPERS. I get it. But what if they're white strippers? What if they're white college educated strippers? What if they're white male Anglo-Saxon strippers?" :) Generally the "my turf" argument is an anti-American argument, because we have the national notion of private property rights. When you buy your house, you do NOT buy dominion over the rest of the neighborhood. Remind them of that, then ask them why they hate private property, what are they, communnissss?
Oh, and I love it when they say they'll pray for me. I say how nice of them, and I'll slaughter a goat for them too, and would they share a curl of their hair right now so I can burn it for the ritual?
No, seriously, the pick-their-reasoning-apart method is good for a City Council because it leads to pointing out their illegality. By asking them to tell what it is that they assume is wrong about an adult business you're asking them to point out whatever it is that they'll make into a supposedly compelling state interest that would give them the right to regulate adult business. What they dislike about it, is their reason for limiting it. And then you can skewer whatever reason they pick, and remind them that we don't make things in America illegal just for the fun of it.
When in doubt, clothe yourself in the flag. It's not about single moms, jobs, the economy (though it is, if you can control the specifics); it's not about prostitutes and drug dealers (those are unsubstantiated assumptions, lies along the lines of the welfare queens Reagan invented); it's about FREEDOM.
And cake. It's always about cake. :)
The local laws in my area generally restrict clubs based on alcohol or zoning. Nudity = no alcohol sales or No nudity = alcohol ok.
Short of the KCK approach, I'm not sure how you could ban a business type that is already in existence without facing a very expensive challenge in the courts - the cost of which might not be a very good use of the taxpayers' dollars.
I was in an industry years ago that kept moving it's convention around. At one point the attendance was so bad is was in danger of being shut down. The next year they moved it to Sin City. Attendance skyrocketed and the show stayed there ever since.
They do? Well there you have the basis of your presentation. Without saying so imply that there are a lot of other club owners in other places that run that other kind of place and who knows what might move in if they got rid of their responisbly managed adult nightclub.
There is no Constitutional requirement for the speech/expression to be political, or about the best way to run the country, or to be a positive contribution to anything. There is no requirement at all, except the one requiring the government to keep their hands off.
In addition, artistic expression has long been held to fall under the protection of the 1st Amendment.
The *courts* have since ruled that incitement to violence or fraud are not considered free speech/expression, along with some other things, but beyond that, it's freedom expression, not "freedom of expression on appropriate topics."
Government doesn't care what they make, just what they can confiscate. Also, I would bet that most earned is not declared.