SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/290926_paynter03.html
Strip clubs and freedom
of speech area is a touchy -- or no-touchy -- subject
Friday, November 3,
2006
By SUSAN PAYNTER
P-I COLUMNIST
I can sympathize with the lips zipped over Tuesday's vote on
the 4-foot strip-club rule.
Standing up in favor of or against what some men sit down for
-- and maybe even unzip for -- in Seattle's remaining
"gentlemen's clubs" doesn't exactly inspire uplifting
Lincoln-Douglas-level debate.
Even Tim Killian, manager of the club owners' mega campaign
to kill Referendum 1, told the P-I: "It's not the kind of
issue people feel comfortable talking about."
But the sheer glut of "Save Free Speech, Vote No on
1" signs started getting to me.
Along with clever "no more nanny state" TV ads
showing Keystone Kops measuring Betty Boop bathing suits, it's
easy to see where more than $850,000 in sweaty twenties has been
spent on this push to persuade voters that this is all about the
prude police.
I rarely recall seeing so many signs. They seem to sprout
like flag toothpicks at a Fourth of July barbecue along every
four feet of parking strip and roadway shoulder.
Last week a huge one -- a sign the size of a small billboard
erected in the yard of a small, neat house on a Crown Hill
corner -- made me stop, park and ring the doorbell.
I figured that either the resident's livelihood comes
directly out of G-strings or he or she has somehow become firmly
convinced that the right of a stripper to grind around on a
guy's groin for cash is truly about the precious essence of
freedom.
Unfortunately, nobody but a very protective German shepherd
was home.
Still, the massiveness of the campaign bugs me in much the
same way it did when the Building Industry Association of
Washington spent millions to smear state Supreme Court
candidates allegedly in the name of protecting individual
property rights.
That's because lap dances have about as much to do with the
right of free speech as Rush Limbaugh does with the rights of
the disabled.
Still, when colleagues and fellow columnists call the 4-foot
rule "inane" and insist that unfettered nudie
naughtiness is a sign of big-city sophistication, it isn't easy
to paint a "priss" target on your back and rise to
disagree.
With a shudder, I remembered the pillorying of former City
Council member Margaret Pageler as a cartoonish, purse-lipped
school marm when she pursued the issue.
Then, studying the official State Voters' Pamphlet this week,
some words in the statement for Referendum 1 struck me, possibly
because they were my very own. They were lifted from a column I
had written when the city first began grappling with what really
happens in the darkened corners of these clubs -- something you
would have to stretch more than four feet to see as anything but
the exchange of sex for cash.
"Although touching is supposedly forbidden, in the
less-lighted recesses of at least two of the clubs, men reported
seeing 'dancers' opening patrons' pants, putting on condoms and,
at the very least, rubbing private parts through men's clothing
to the point of some tough laundry stains."
Maybe, as some have written and speechified, that really
isn't much of a problem. Indeed, police do have more serious
matters -- such as street prostitution -- to patrol.
But doesn't society always have a sliding scale of woes to
worry about -- some of them worse than others?
If we want a vote, up or down, on legalizing prostitution,
then, in the words of G.W. Bush, bring it on. But if, outside of
Nevada, we still oppose the oldest profession when it is
practiced on the street, do we ignore it when it's inside a club
that may soon be built next to your house?
City Council member (and former columnist) Jean Godden has
said that her concern is "for the First Amendment and also
for my feeling that too often we have men telling women what
they can do with their own bodies."
And, yes, I read more than 100 letters from strippers sent to
other City Council members the last time the
more-than-arm's-length rule was debated. Those letters claimed
that, without lap dancing, moms and students couldn't possibly
pay the rent, support their kids and ailing elderly parents, and
pay their tuition to med school.
I don't know how many of those letters Godden read. If she
did see them, she may have noticed that they were all postmarked
about the same time and expressed amazingly similar
circumstances. In other words, they smelled like any other
orchestrated letter-writing campaign -- a campaign run by
club-owning men with a lot to gain by telling women what to do
with their letters in order to keep big pots of cash.
I also don't know how many former sex-industry workers and
strippers Godden has interviewed over the years. But, soon after
escaping the so-called adult entertainment industry, the many
with whom I have spoken usually confide how exploited they felt
at the time. Many say they must pay club owners onerous fees
just for the chance to "dance." Then they must push
the envelope of illegal conduct further and further in order to
make up the difference.
Somehow the 4-foot rule -- in the clubs where it is still
required -- survives in Bellevue, Everett, Federal Way,
Kirkland, Lake Forest Park and Tacoma. In Burien, it's 10 feet.
True, there is no such restriction against "the nearness
of you" in Chicago or Philly, Dallas or Denver. So, if
that's the "freedom" we want here, and if we accept
the reality of the behavior it brings -- then, in an exercise of
true free speech -- let's at least be willing to straighten our
laps, open our yaps and say so.
Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or e-mail susanpaynter@seattlepi.com.
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