Don't Mess With Taxes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:10 PM

Remember Texas's "pole tax," the $5 per customer fee applied to strip clubs in January? Turns out that a state judge has ruled the tax to be a violation of the First Amendment. The Attorney General intends to devote more public funds to appealing the ruling, while other supporters of the tax are investigating reforms to the legislation that would help it pass constitutional muster. (Incidentally, I haven't read the court opinion, but I am surprised that a case decided on free speech grounds also seems to hinge (if the published reports are correct) on the earmarking of the revenues from the tax.)

In unrelated news, via Pete at Drug WarRant we learn of a wonderful series of videos concerning heroin. The presenter is Michael Jourdan, a leading Danish drug researcher. Heroin (like methamphetamine) is a word that for many people is so evocative of danger as to preclude marshaling facts or reasoning about policy. Jourdan provides the facts, and some fine reasoning along the way, too.

Labels: dancing, Drug WarRant, heroin, taxes, Texas

 
New York Does Not Believe in Dancing
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:06 PM

Last year Vice Squad stumbled across the fact that New York City establishments serving food or drink cannot also host dancing (even of the spontaneous sort by customers) unless the establishments have acquired a special "cabaret" license. The numbers of legal NYC dance houses are on the rise, we are now happy to report (or repeat, rather). Another dance parade is scheduled for May 17 to protest the draconian anti-dance legislation. A pro-dance activist [imagine that we have gotten to the point where there can be such a thing as a pro-dance activist] claims that the real problem is noise, not dance, and that the smoking ban is responsible for a New York noise boost -- as Vice Squad recently noted for Paris. Speaking of the Paris smoking ban, there's a claim that Paris clubs are learning what London pubs learned after the smoking ban went into effect: smoke covers up the ambient smell of these establishments, and that can be a good thing.

Labels: Britain, dancing, France, New York, smoking ban

 
Taxing Live Erotic Shows [Updated]
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:06 PM

Vice Squad was out of town in late December when (links in this post are not safe for work) an Illinois appeals court ruled that Chicago could not exempt small live entertainment venues, except for strip clubs, from a tax on ticket sales. Such a provision discriminates against erotic businesses based on the content of their expression, the court ruled, and that sort of discrimination has to jump through high and multiple hoops to be constitutional. On New Year's day, a $5 per customer tax went into effect for Texas strip clubs. The first constitutional challenge to the tax was brushed aside in mid-December, before the Chicago ruling. The Texas law looks for Constitutional cover from the "secondary effects" doctrine, which did not seem to come into play in the Chicago tax.

Update: This week's Economist also has an article on Texas's "pole tax". The article mentions the recent popularity of earmarking the proceeds for new taxes. (Part of the controversy surrounding the Texas strip club tax is that the proceeds are directed to programs aiding sexual violence victims, despite there being little in the way of hard evidence that strip clubs increase sexual violence.) Beyond the Texas case, all of the earmarked taxes that are mentioned are vice-related: (non-diet) sodas, tobacco, and video games have all recently been singled out for taxes with earmarked revenues -- an approach frequently used for gambling taxes, too. Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania state senator is looking at an earmarked tax on adult businesses (link not safe for work).

Labels: Chicago, dancing, Illinois, tax, Texas

 
A Shift for Vegas: Legal Prostitution is Being Advertised
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:18 PM

Back in July, a federal judge struck down a Nevada state law that prevented the legal brothels (located in rural counties) from advertising in Nevada's two most populous counties, which contain Las Vegas and Reno and in which brothel prostitution is not permitted as a matter of state law. I think that the lawsuit was short-sighted on the part of brothel owners, and that voluminous or particularly provocative ads will increase pressure to end the state acceptance of legal prostitution in rural counties. But so far, it seems, the ads are discreet -- they are targeted away from the good people residing in Las Vegas, and aimed instead at tourists and those dodgy alternative types. The risque' ads come from the Vegas strip clubs, apparently.

Labels: dancing, Las Vegas, Nevada, prostitution

 
Suppressing Dancing
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:05 AM

Two weeks ago we noted the protest against the New York City dancing regulations that restrict dancing to licensed cabarets. In Sunday's New York Times, Barbara Ehrenreich, who has just published a book on the history of dancing in public, offers an op-ed that notes the tendencies over the centuries of the forces of law and order to clamp down on dancing. And these forces are trying to stifle human nature itself:

The need for public, celebratory dance seems to be hardwired into us. Rock art from around the world depicts stick figures dancing in lines and circles at least as far back as 10,000 years ago. According to some anthropologists, dance helped bond prehistoric people together in the large groups that were necessary for collective defense against marauding predators, both animals and human. While language also serves to forge community, it doesn’t come close to possessing the emotional urgency of dance. Without dance, we risk loneliness and anomie.

I might add that seeking intoxication or hallucinogenic experiences also seems more-or-less "hardwired into us." But this piece of human nature is even more likely to fall afoul of the mighty.

Labels: dancing

 
NYC Dance Parade
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:16 AM

A protest in New York City yesterday took the unusual form of a dance parade. The target of the protest is rules from the 1920s that require special cabaret licenses for establishments that serve food or drink, if dancing also is to take place there. The licensing regulations have been challenged, but were upheld in an appeals court decision two weeks ago. And so the dance parade.

Cabarets were major parts of the New York City social scene before World War I. But times changed, as chronicled in The Night Club Era, a 1933 book (reissued in 1999) by Stanley Walker:

The cabaret, during the war and immediately afterward, found the going tough. It was being smirched by a cheaper and less leisurely life, harried by the dance halls and chevvied by all manner of reformers, vice crusaders, licensing regulations and the massed forces of virtue [page 77].

("Chevvied" means, roughly, "harassed," it seems.) Of course, these disreputable pre-World War I cabarets that provoked the good people of the land were soon replaced, during Prohibition, with something perhaps even less to their liking; Walker again, from page 77:

How innocent the old-time cabarets appear, viewed after the years of the hot night clubs! And yet these places had to contend with enemies almost as persistently annoying as prohibition agents and shakedown artists. There was a serious attack in 1915, when a committee... gathered much fearsome data against the cabaret. The object of this committee was not so much to abolish dancing as to divorce it from restaurants, and divorce both dancing and eating from drinking. It was dangerous, it appeared, to eat, drink and dance in the same place.

And the legal divorce continues, unless a marriage license between food and dance is acquired.

For background information on the recent case and the enforcement of the cabaret license law, see here (lawsuit filed) and here (Goths have difficulty dancing in NYC).

Labels: dancing, New York, Prohibition

 
Seconds on Secondary Effects
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:55 PM

A couple days ago Vice Squad mentioned the "secondary effects" analysis that is the dominant strain in the body of US Constitutional law relevant for erotic dancing. The secondary effects are unhappy developments, including increased crime and lower property values, that might arise in the vicinity of an adult-oriented establishment. They serve as a basis for justifying, in a constitutional sense, some restrictions on the nature of adult-oriented activities that are permitted.

In California, purported secondary effects are being put to a new use, an attempt to justify a tax aimed specifically at the porn and adult entertainment industries. The proceeds of the proposed tax are earmarked for programs that combat crime.

The folks at Adult Video News are not impressed by the pending bill (as always with AVN, the link is not work-safe), calling it "a clearly unconstitutional attempt to selectively tax speech on the basis of its content." I agree with their characterization. The Supreme Court's secondary effects analysis is only applicable for controls upon speech that are deemed to be content-neutral, that would apply just as well to political speech as to commercial speech as to any other type of speech. It is a stretch to label a nude dancing ban (or, for instance, a G-string requirement) as content neutral, but that stretch is now established law. A tax on adult-themed enterprises is much broader than a nude dancing ban, and as it doesn't seem to apply to any other types of businesses that might spur crime or lower property values, seems on its face to be a content-based restriction on speech. And these sorts of restrictions must pass a higher bar to be consistent with the Constitution -- a bar placed so high that few restrictions can clear it.

There's a nice post from October 2006 concerning the jurisprudence around secondary effects on a blog entitled "talkbacknorthampton," which has many interesting posts defending free speech.

Labels: dancing, obscenity, pornography, Supreme Court, taxes

 
Nude Dancing and Secondary Effects
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:55 PM

Can a municipality ban nude dancing in adult establishments? The Supreme Court has ruled that erotic dancing is a form of expressive conduct (like flag burning or draft card burning) and as such is entitled to a measure of the constitutional protections offered to speech. In practice, what this means is that a municipality can not just ban nude dancing, unless it provides a fig leaf of a rationale by claiming that what it really wants to do is to combat the nasty secondary effects associated with nude dancing, such as prostitution and public nuisance. And the fig leaf of a rationale doesn't materialize just because it is asserted that a requirement of G-strings is necessary to combat those secondary effects; rather, some sort of reference to actual evidence is required, too. Hartford, Vermont, couldn't be bothered with looking at any evidence before it passed a ban on nude dancing -- after the fact its planning department did manage to review the experiences elsewhere. But this lackadaisical approach was found by a Federal court to render the ordinance unconstitutional, and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the lower court's opinion.

Now does anyone really believe that nude dancing creates negative secondary effects but that allowing only nearly-nude dancing is a reasonable way of controlling these effects? Well, no. This obvious logical deficiency in the law provided a starting point for a provocative analysis by Amy Adler; here's a short excerpt from her abstract:

I show that the legal struggles over the meanings and the dangers of the gyrating, naked female body can be fully understood only when placed within a broader context: the highly charged terrain of female sexuality. By rereading the cases as texts regulating gender and sexuality and not just speech, a dramatically new understanding of them emerges: The nude dancing cases are built on a foundation of sexual panic, driven by dread of the female body.

Vice Squad had a nude dancing frenzy a few years ago; here's the May 28, 2004 post. (This link seems to work, but other links to previous posts basically have been failures since an 'upgrade' to Blogger's software -- the links generally take you only to the month of the relevant post. I will try to remember to include the actual date of linked previous posts for those with too much time on their hands. And in Blogger's defense, I must say that I like the new "label" feature, so that you can easily reach all of Vice Squad's dancing-related posts. One problem with this feature, however, is that our blog had about 1200 unlabeled, pre-existing posts, and the process of going back and attaching labels has been haphazard. But we will soldier on.)

Labels: dancing, obscenity, Supreme Court

 
No Lap Dancing in Seattle?
- posted by Michael @ 9:50 PM

As it often happens, the fans of vice should be careful what they wish for. Recently, a federal judge has struck down the 17-year moratorium on new strip clubs in Seattle. Put one in the win column for vice? Not necessarily. (Note that the claim in the last section of the MSNBC news story that the Vice Squad welcomes the proposed prohibitions is completely misleading and we are planning to sue for defamation.) The City Council is going to vote tonight on introducing one of the toughest adult entertainment restrictions among the big US cities. Reportedly, lap dances, private rooms, and placing dollar bills in the G-string would be prohibited, dancers would have to stay 4 feet away from customers, and the clubs would be required to have parking-garage brightness lighting. Why would Seattle, the city that voted two years ago to make enforcement of marijuana-related laws the lowest priority of the police department, seriously consider significant limitations on lap dancing? Is it because marijuana and strip clubs might be substitutes? Perhaps a person who gets high wouldn’t be interested in watching striptease. The news article does report that there is very little interest in the issue in the city. (This logic would be similar to that used by Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader in the late 1950’s-early 1960’s, who justified jamming western radio broadcasts by saying that no Soviet citizen wanted to listen to those slanderous lies.) But what if pot and striptease are complements at least for some people? Seriously though, after the perverse outcome of the prohibition of discrimination against out-of-state wine shippers (Vice Squad reported on it here) and now this Seattle case, I almost wish that federal courts stopped ruling in favor of vice. But I surely need to be careful about this wish too…

Labels: dancing

 
Did Closing Dance Bars Increase Prostitution?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:58 PM

Vice Squad has loosely been following the situation in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where authorities have been closing "dance bars," in which young women dance for tips from a male clientele. The main reason for the crackdown, it seems, is the belief that the bars are fronts for prostitution. But what happens when the bars are closed and the dancers lose their jobs? It may be that some of them then turn to prostitution to make ends meet.

Labels: dancing, India, prostitution

 
Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival
- posted by Michael @ 8:53 PM

Darn, I have just missed it. It turns out that the San Francisco's 4th Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival ended today. I learned about it this morning from our local newspaper, The Herald Times (subscription required) that talked about a "college of sorts," as they called it. The actual name is Whore College. It's a day of classes on sex worker techniques, self defence, marketings, etc. Sounds like useful stuff. Perhaps more useful than what I have just finished teaching this semester.

Labels: dancing, marketing, prostitution

 
Mumbai Dancer Protest
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:24 PM

There has been an attempt to close "dance bars" in the Indian state of Maharashtra. (Dance bars hire girls who, well, dance, while the male clientèle tosses currency in their direction. The state government thinks that the bars are fronts for prostitution, or crime incubators more generally.) Already some 1,500 dance bars have been closed, though the 700 bars in Mumbai (Bombay) have not yet met that fate. Despite an early judicial victory, the bars remain at risk. So some 10,000 dancers joined a street protest in Mumbai (Bombay), shouting "Save Our Jobs." It has been suggested that closing the bars would lead to more prostitution, as the dancers would look to alternative sources of income.

Labels: dancing, India, policing, prostitution

 
More on Indian Obscenity Policing
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:51 PM

The closing of dance bars in the state of Maharashtra apparently has not yet included such bars in Mumbai (Bombay), which is located in Maharashtra. But one suspects that the tolerance will not last long, as there's a new cop in town. Since January, Sanjay Aparanti, a medical doctor, has been Deputy Commissioner of Police (Enforcement) in Mumbai, and he is on a crusade: 'I have decided Mumbai must be rid of obscenity in all walks of life.' Oh dear. So far it looks as if the good doctor has taken particular aim at outdoor advertising and television broadcasting that does not meet his less-than-precise standards. What is this 'obscenity in all walks of life' that must be stamped out? 'Advertisements that show female models with scanty clothes; film promos full of vulgarity; music albums and remix videos full of vulgarity; film posters full of obscenity; some newspapers regularly carry porn material and I have served them notices too.'

Labels: dancing, India, marketing, obscenity, policing, pornography

 
India's Dancing Girls Protest Bar Closures
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:35 PM

Dance bars in the western Indian state of Maharashtra have been closed by the government. The claim is that the bars double as fronts for prostitution, and concerns were also expressed that young men spend too much money there. The government move is being countered with protests:

Hundreds of dancing girls and bar owners took to the streets yesterday to demonstrate against a decision to close the infamous dance bars and clubs of Maharashtra in west India. Crowds of colourfully dressed women and vociferous bar managers swamped the roads in an attempt to register their discontent with a move which they claim is discriminatory and incompatible with the state's reputation as a haven for hedonistic partying.

Speaking of vice-related protests in Maharashtra, the tea traders intend a one-day strike on Wednesday aimed at the relatively high state value-added tax on tea. Tea, of course, is a major commodity in India and Maharashtra.

Apologies for the unintended and unannounced blogging break.

Labels: dancing, India, obscenity, prostitution

 
Circumventing a Nude Dancing Ban
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:16 PM

Maybe this is true. According to this linked Reuters article, a Boise strip club uses an exception in the law to get around a ban on nude dancing. The city public nudity ban explicitly exempts activities with serious artistic merit. The idea was to ensure that art classes and stage productions would not be cited under the law. But what constitutes an art class, anyway?: "On what it calls Art Club Nights, the Erotic City strip club charges customers US$15 (8 pounds) for a sketch pad, pencil, and a chance to see completely naked women dancers."

Labels: dancing, obscenity

 
Fired For Smoking Off the Job?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:11 PM

Over at Crescat, Waddling Thunder supports the right of a private company to insist that its employees not smoke, even off of the job. I tend to agree. It is worth noting, however, that such a policy could not legally be adopted by most employers here in the state of Illinois. The 1991 Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act (§ 820 ILCS 55/5) reads in part "...it shall be unlawful for an employer to refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise disadvantage any individual, with respect to compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment because the individual uses lawful products off the premises of the employer during nonworking hours." There are exceptions, but it doesn't look as if the Michigan company that sparked the recent flurry of news coverage would fall within them.

According to the New York Times article linked by Waddling Thunder, Michigan is one of 20 states that do not have laws prohibiting the conditioning of employment on off-the-job non-smoking.

Incidentally, I am sympathetic to the company's right to do this (even though, like Waddling Thunder, I do not think much of the policy), in part because I would like to see legal availability of all drugs for adults. As part of the overall regulatory scheme, however, I think it would be fine for employers and insurance companies to discriminate on the basis of opiate or cocaine use (or on the possession of a license to use opiates or cocaine, which is another potential element of a legal regime for those drugs.)

Vice Squad came across the Illinois Right to Privacy act once before, when it was partly or wholly responsible for the demise of the ban on dancing at Wheaton College.

Labels: dancing, drugs, smoking

 
Striptease
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:38 PM

Vice Squad was in attendance at a talk Tuesday night given by Rachel Shteir, the author of Striptease. The book focuses on the 1920s to 1960s in the US. She showed slides, so it was dark in the room. As a result, my notes are limited and partly illegible, but I will mention a few things that I learned at the talk -- though I can't guarantee that my notes and memory are completely accurate (i.e., I can't guarantee that they meet even my usual low standards for accuracy.)

The striptease format didn't always exist, and policy was partly to blame. Laws forbade removing clothes and dancing. So there were strip acts and tease acts (presumably the latter involving scantily clad women dancing), but there were not striptease acts. The word 'striptease' dates only to the Jazz Age. (A quick check of oed.com finds a 1930 usage of 'strip and tease' in 1930, with 'strip tease' appearing six years later.) Other laws (at various places, various times) made it illegal for a performer to remove her clothing, leading to a whole bestiary of avoidance responses: doves, monkeys, snakes, and panthers, became adept at disrobing striptease artists.

Mae West was arrested and convicted in 1927 on obscenity charges for her Broadway play, "Sex".

Chicago, Vice Squad's chief locale, hosted two major moments in striptease history. The first was the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where Little Egypt danced the hoochie-coochie. The second was the 1933 World's Fair, where Sally Rand packed in the patrons with her fan dance.

Today, stripping has largely lost the tease part, and is a segment of the porn industry: "big business, not show business."

Labels: dancing, obscenity, pornography

 
"Pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile..."
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:05 AM

Some good folks donate toys to poor kids during the holiday season. Public housing residents in North Carolina have benefited from such generosity in the past. But not all toys are welcome at the Statesville Housing Authority in Iredell County, NC. Last year's donated toys from a local adult nightclub caused controversy, so this year, the Housing Authority will not accept the tainted largesse.

Thanks to Sister Geoff at The Superlative Suppository for the pointer; part of the good sister's take: "Strip clubs contribute nothing to the community, and we intend to keep it that way!"

Labels: dancing, sex

 
Canadian Visa Policy Changes
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:55 PM

Back in July, ever-vigilant Vice Squad noted Canada's policy of providing temporary work permits for exotic dancers -- as well as the surprising preference for dancers from Romania. The whole program, Romanian preference and all, is now going by the boards; indeed, it was a specific Romanian preference that crumbled the edifice:

The Canadian government, under fire because one of its ministers has been accused of giving preferential treatment to a Romanian stripper, said on Wednesday it was scrapping a program that handed out temporary work permits to foreign-born exotic dancers.

Now I knew that Canada was small, but I didn't know that public policies require unanimous consent: "Human Resources Minister Joe Volpe said it was clear that not all Canadians supported the program, which granted permits to around 660 foreign strippers to work in Canada last year."

A hat tip to this shockingly-named blog for the pointer.

Labels: Canada, dancing, sex

 
Squeezing Nude Juice Bars in South Dakota
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:39 PM

It turns out that not everyone thinks that nude dancing in public establishments should be tolerated. In South Dakota, some local activists are taking their case statewide:

Citizens Against Nude Juice Bars and Pornography has been gaining signatures on informal petitions that ask South Dakota lawmakers to approve an effective state obscenity law...

The organization chose this path after Bob Rieger took advantage of an exception in McCook County's nude-dancing ban last summer to reopen Racehorses Gentlemen's Club as a movie theater outside of Salem. It offers black-and-white and independent movies, as well as nude dancing.

One suspects that it is not the cinema that is the main draw at Racehorses, despite South Dakota's reputation for embracing independent films.

The name of the group is a bit puzzling, for two reasons. First, what will happen to those concerned citizens who disapprove of nude juice bars, but approve of pornography, and vice versa? Second, just what is a nude juice bar, anyway? Morality in Media to the rescue:

An entrepreneur who does not have a liquor license or who has lost it for violations of a nudity-alcohol ordinance, or who may want to avoid the prohibitions or provisions of such an ordinance, will frequently turn to the "Juice Bar" gambit where, instead of serving alcohol, he or she will serve soft drinks or juices and continue presenting nude "dancing." These establishments may also admit minors since no liquor is served. This latter element makes such establishments doubly pernicious.

[Update: A Vice Squad reader writes in about nude juice bars in one California region. Alcohol licensing laws come packaged with restrictions that preclude total nudity in establishments that serve alcohol (this is the case in Chicago, too). But at places without an alcohol license -- such as juice bars -- total nudity is permitted. The California juice bars, according to the VS reader, allow in patrons who are 18 years old or older, while the alcohol-serving clubs are only for those 21 and up.]

Labels: dancing, pornography, South Dakota