On Thursday, an Associated Press story ran in The Lantern about new laws strip clubs and other sex-oriented businesses must abide by.
Though the law was passed in May, strip club owners have been trying to gather enough signatures to put the measure on the Nov. 6 ballot – they failed and the new rules will take effect immediately.
According to the AP story, “the restrictions include a ban on dancers touching patrons or each other and a prohibition of nude dancing in clubs after midnight”.
We believe these new restrictions will adversely impact the dancers’ income and infringe on their rights. We are against this new set of rules not because we approve (or disapprove) of stripping or exotic dancing as a profession but because dancer-patron interaction really does not harm anyone.
If two consenting adults are willing, there is no reason why lap dances and other acts should not be allowed. After all, these women have the right to earn a living just like anyone else, and their ability to earn a living is adversely affected by rules against touching.
Also in the story, Luke Liakos, the president of Buckeye Association of Club Executives said, “It’s un-American to limit free speech just because it offends the moral code of a small but noisy group of censors,” and he made a good point.
Citizens for Community Values, the same group that led efforts to outlaw same-sex marriage in Ohio, proposed the bill. This kind of sponsored legislation could lead us down a slippery slope with the line between church and state becoming even more blurred, as “community values” could easily be interchanged with “religious values” or other rhetoric from the religious right.
Democracy is as much about protecting the rights of the minority as the consensus of majority. Groups such as CCV wish to impose a code of morality on a population that might not agree with it. CCV attacks groups already out of the mainstream that the general population will not rally to defend. It is hard for most Ohioans to get fired up about protecting the rights of gays and strippers, but that is wrong. When one individual’s rights become forfeit, what are the rest of ours worth?
