From Metro Pulse by Ellen Mallernee
Lexi is everything and nothing you’d expect. The exotic dancer—she doesn’t mind if you call her a
stripper, in the right company. Lexi, who prefers to go by her stage name, works weekends at Th’Katch to support her kids aged 21 to two. She’s never revealed her profession to Tennessee officials: I moved to Tennessee, and I’m the
devil, she says. At PTA meetings, church and the bank, she keeps her profession to herself.
Lately, Lexi’s livelihood has caused her more grief than ever. She’s utterly dismayed by the two stringent ordinances, passed unanimously
by both Knox County (on March 28) and the city (on May 24), that will mandate the licensing, location and conduct of adult businesses. In other words, in the strip clubs there will be no more nudity, no more lap dances and no more alcohol on site. From
now on, each employee and business will be required to obtain a license, and bookstores and cabarets will close each night by midnight, on Sundays and on national holidays.
Before they voted on the ordinances, Chattanooga attorney Scott Bergthold
presented both the County Commission and City Council with enormous binders of case studies from across the United States, in an effort to cite the deleterious secondary effects of adult operations. Such effects allegedly include decreased property
values, increased crime and prostitution rates, and the spread of sexual diseases.
Lexi and hundreds of others in the industry adamantly dispute these accusations, and fear for the fate of their careers and their families.
I work in a
safe, controlled environment, Lexi says. They can look at all the police records. There’s never been a prostitute arrested at our club.
[Legislators have] picked on us from day one, says Don Rowe, manager of the
Mouse’s Ear, a Kingston Pike strip club. “ I’ve been doing this for 25 years now. One year they want us to keep our clothes on, the next year we can take them off. It’s back and forth. They can’t seem to make up their
minds, but it seems very serious this time, and we’re going to try to do something about it.
We’re talking about 300-plus families affected by this, says Lynn Davis, who’s worked at The Emerald Club since its opening
in 2001. Now that’s quite a lot of tax revenue to the city to begin with, so it’s more serious than just a frivolous thing like, ‘We’re going to take a morality stance and wipe out these businesses.’ Davis says his
club has always upheld strict rules in order to comply with the letter of the law. We get compliments all the time from officers who work this end of town, who thank us for running a tight operation where they never get called out here, If you
really want to get rid of prostitution and crime, there are 120 of these [adverts for escorts in the phone book] to look at.
Not everyone is quick to point out the cons of Knoxville’s adult industry; in fact, some say we’ll
miss it sorely when it’s diminished, or gone. After all, as Knoxville works to grow into its convention center, the absence of adult nightlife might be a deterrent for travelers looking to book a conference here. Davis says the Honda Hoot, and a
recent bowling tournament, significantly increased his business, as does most any event that draws out-of-towners.
In response to the ordinances, Towne and Country Bookstore and Knoxville Adult Video Superstore have filed suit jointly against the
county for violation of their First Amendment rights, among other things, and at least four of the city’s adult-oriented businesses—Th’Katch, The Mouse’s Ear, West Knox News and The Last Chance Adult Theater, another strip
club—say they’re gearing up for lawsuits of their own.
First Amendment activists have long reasoned that nude dancing warrants the same protection afforded to “legitimate” theater and dance performances and that it’s
a viable form of artistic expression. At Last Chance, for instance, there’s a sort of naked gymnastics that occurs, replete with hand walking and tumbling, in glittery, platform shoes, no less. The costumes are theatrical, if brief.
Because
litigation of this sort is a hotbed for First Amendment lawsuits and often requires a lengthy appeals process, some community members are fuming over the potential cost to taxpayers.
City Councilman Joe Bailey says his concerns during the voting
process were relatively inconsequential, as his constituents seemed resolved to vote for the ordinance. We’ve already got a tight enough budget without going and duplicating a lawsuit. I thought we should just wait and see what the courts
[ruling on the county lawsuits] say before we start going into another lawsuit.
Rowe says he attended the City Council meeting during which the ordinances were unanimously approved. “ I was so mad. I was the first one in that meeting
and the first one to step out. There was a room full of people there to protest the thing, and bam, bam, bam, it’s gone.
There was also a concern that the city would become an attractive place for adult businesses to relocate, Roddy
says. Right there in front of the whole Council, the city attorney said that was the whole reason, but I don’t know where that came from.... These other businesses are grandfathered in, says Bailey, who feels Council was wrongly supplied
with the relocation excuse. As it is, strict zoning regulations would make it arduous if not impossible for new adult businesses to open shop in the city of Knoxville.
Many business owners scramble to “go bikini,” preparing to become
“go-go” bars once the ordinances are in effect. The women at the Emerald Club, for one, will wear bikinis, but many are convinced that go-go bars won’t be as well attended as strip bars.
In the meantime, the new ordinances have
not yet been enforced, as the businesses have been granted a preliminary injunction. County Law Director Mike Moyers says the county is filing a motion to dismiss most, if not all, of the claims and arguments made by the other side. The plaintiffs
will have 30 days to respond, and a hearing will be scheduled in late July or early August: Our position is that it will be dispositive and that we’ll have a case more clearly focused on the issues that remain.
Lexi works only one or
two nights a week at Th’Katch, but often makes in one night (on average $200 to $300) as much as she makes all week at the lawyer’s office. This may soon change. Besides prohibiting full nudity, the new codes specify that all sexually
oriented businesses be closed by midnight. Because she makes 50 to 60 percent of her money between one and three in the morning, that threatens to severely hamper Lexi’s income. The new regulations would limit hours of operation from 8 a.m. to
midnight.
Dancers claim they’ll lose further income when the implemented ordinances essentially do away with the lap dance, as customers must keep a distance of six feet from dancers at all times. Lexi says she derives the bulk of her money
from chair or couch dances, not stage performances.
Men aren’t going to want to see a beautiful woman from six feet away, says Sherrie, another local dancer. You can’t even tip a woman from six feet away.
City
Law Director Morris Kizer says the lap dance provision was included because “there’s a case in the court of appeals in [Jackson, Tenn.] that says that lap dances fall within the Tennessee statute’s definition of prostitution.” The
Tennessee Code Annotated defines prostitution as “engaging in, or offering to engage in, sexual activity as a business,” and the particular case to which Kizer refers took issue with whether lap dancing could be included in this definition,
ultimately determining that it could.
Supreme Court cases regularly determine that lap dancing is conduct, not speech, thus obviating First Amendment concerns. However, some federal courts have struck down six-foot buffer zones, in favor of a
three-foot buffer zone that wouldn’t ban as much expression.
Lexi thinks the local strip clubs will lose a lot of business without personal contact from dancers. When [customers] come in, that’s what they need, not just touching,
but the closeness of being able to sit and talk ,
Yet another specification will force strip clubs and adult bookstores to close on Sundays and all national holidays.
The “brown bag” rule, also, will
no longer apply, doing away with any alcohol on the premises of a strip bar, and simultaneously “taking away the party atmosphere,” says Lexi, who doesn’t see a need for the changes, as the clubs in town already tightly regulate
alcohol. Under the previous ordinances, all alcohol had to be consumed, and off the tables, by 1 a.m.
Some employees are disturbed by the new ordinance provision requiring businesses and employees to obtain a sexually oriented business license
from the clerk’s office, to be renewed once a year. That was reportedly included to ensure that anyone with a drug or sex-related felony history could not work in the business.
Lawyers and employers have taken issue with that for a number
of reasons. It’ll knock out some people who don’t want their name associated with the job, some students who are going into a law profession, people who don’t want this to come back and bite them at a later time, Davis says,
Ed Summers, attorney for Th’Katch, says he disagrees that criminal pasts ought to determine a person’s vocation. One or more of the dancers will be plaintiffs in the lawsuit on the theory that if you’ve been convicted of
certain offenses and you’re not able to receive your license to work, they think that’s an unlawful restraint on their ability to make a living. If they have been convicted of something, and they’ve paid the penalty, why shouldn’t
they be able to proceed with their lives?
Recently, the Knoxville Adult Video Superstore moved into a building just off I-40 on Lovell Road. Many community members were chafed by the new shop, perhaps because roughly a mile away in either
direction of the bookstore sits the sprawling US Cellular Soccer complex and the Lovell Heights Church of God. Though it certainly wasn’t the community’s first adult-oriented business, the repercussions of this particular shop were
far-reaching, creating the current chain of litigation.
Lovell Heights’ pastor, John Hughes, says that his church, along with Concord Baptist on Kingston Pike, let its displeasure be known to the county. I’m against any business
like that. It’s just an unhealthy thing for the environment. It’s a slippery slope once that gets into your community, and it appeals to the lowest common denominator, to the base instincts. Hughes was especially appalled that the
bookstore opened directly across the street from a truck stop. They’ve targeted the truckers specifically, he says, and Lexi says that indeed Th’Katch, just down the road from the same truck stop, does get a lot of truck driver
customers.
After the county received complaints about the bookstore, Moyers contacted Scott Bergthold, a Chattanooga lawyer in his early 30s with a lengthy resume and a reputation as one of the nation’s only lawyers focused exclusively on
drafting and defending municipal adult business regulations. Bergthold, who refused to comment, is also the former president of an organization called the Community Defense Counsel, funded by the Alliance Defense Fund, a religious group devoted to
family-values and sanctity-of-life causes.
After he drafted the county’s ordinances, the city hired Bergthold to configure theirs as well. Despite Kizer’s and Moyer’s appraisal of the man, whom they say they’re
“enormously impressed with,” not everyone feels confident that Bergthold’s got Knoxville’s best interests in mind.
This guy out of Chattanooga goes around talking to cities about his ordinances, and he knows
they’re going to be generating lawsuits, so he makes a pretty good living, says Seymour, The Last Chance’s attorney. I think they got sold a bill of goods by this guy.
Even Councilman Bailey questions the attorney’s
motives, saying: I really did not buy what this attorney was saying about our community. It didn’t hold true to this area. If you’re an attorney, that’s a good way to make a living. I’d like to have a business like that. He
spends 50 percent of his time creating a lawsuit and the other 50 percent of his time defending it.
This legislation isn’t the first of its sort to move from Knoxville into the court system. The city’s case against Entertainment
Resources, owner of a defunct adult bookstore called Fantasy Video, was resolved just this past Wednesday after seven years of litigation. The state Supreme Court determined unanimously that the City’s 1998 ordinance specifying the definition and
location of adult businesses was unconstitutional.
From the day of the store’s opening on Papermill Road in ‘98, KPD conducted almost daily inspections of Fantasy Video, each time issuing citations for violation of Knoxville City
Code. Four months after the store opened, the city was granted a temporary injunction against Fantasy Video, shutting it down because they deemed a “substantial” or “significant” portion of the store’s stock was composed of
videos depicting sexual activities. That violated the city code because the store was within 1,000 feet of an establishment that sold alcohol, a Boy Scouts Administrative Office, and a residentially zoned district.
Fantasy Video filed its answer,
declaring the city’s ordinances unconstitutional, and questioning the “vague” wording of Knoxville City Code 16-468. Along with two Nashville attorneys, Knoxville lawyer Richard Gaines argued that the terms “substantial” and
“significant” were too broad, as his clients did stock the shelves in its front room with thousands of G-, PG- and R-rated films. This is the biggest case of its sort that’s come out of the state Supreme Court in a while , says
Gaines, who calls the case a huge victory for First Amendment rights. It’s an attempt to exclude these businesses, and just a clear and open violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. After the Entertainment Resources case, Gaines
says, Any judge is going to think twice about backing the city up.
County Law Director Mike Moyers isn’t sure what impact the case may have on current litigation: We’re studying the case, and if we need to make any changes
to reflect what the Supreme Court has done, we’ll make those changes,
The Supreme Court opinion rewarded Entertainment Resources damages and attorney’s fees. Though the exact amount has yet to be determined, it may cost Knoxville
taxpayers up to $1 million dollars. Some fear that the new litigation over adult businesses could be even more costly.
Some adult entertainers worry that they’ll be unable to find jobs outside of the business they’ve worked in for
many years. Already looking into a move to Georgia, where adult ordinances are more lenient, Lexi might just have to pick up and start over again, though it’s surely no easy task to relocate 10 children.
