I’ve never figured out how allowing women to take their clothes off for money is more demeaning to them than telling them that they can’t. They’re adults, not kindergarteners. With regards to the concept that these clubs attract crime, so do banks. 
Well, er, I suppose I should clarify that what I had in mind was more along the lines of a “free speech” debate, rather than a “good/bad” debate. Sorry, my fault.
I was hoping someone could explain to me one really good thumping reason why it’s a bad idea for women to take off their clothes for money, other than “it’s immodest and incites lust in men”.
Also, I think the Supreme Court’s “community” ruling, that says that each community can decide for itself, is a good idea on the face of it. But then again, it sounds a little bit like waffling. If it’s a woman’s First Amendment right to take off her clothes for money, then it IS. Period. So why should it be left up to each community to decide? Seems to me like that’s allowing Peoria, Pittsburgh, and Podunk to second-guess the Supreme Court.
Over here in Cleveland, they are trying to buy up the dance bars on Brookpark road, then demolish them. True.
Being a former dancer myself; after I quit, I did feel like I’d been exploited.
It was a pretty lousy job, dealing with some not nice customers et al.
Of course they should be allowed to dance, its only the moral majority that thinks they are bad.
Don’t like em, don’t go there.
But its the men customers who are being “exploited” as it were; $5 a drink, just to sit and talk with one of the dancers.
My 2 cents.
DDG, have I mentioned lately what an insightful person you are? The “community standards” rule set out in Miller (law people - it is Miller, right?) goes beyond allowing towns to second-guess the Supremes; it allows them to second-guess the Constitution. Because of Miller, free speech, at least as it applies to obscenity, is the only constitutional right that varies from location to location in this country. Nothing in the Constitution allows our constitutional rights to be abrogated depending on where you are, but the Supremes went ahead and created this rule out of whole cloth.
It’s a bad rule, but unfortunately I don’t see it going away any time soon.
Like Potter Stewart, Sua, you may not be able to come up with an all-encompassing definition for “bad law” but “You know it when you see it.”
BTW, in response to the OP:
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Obviously, any dance clubs should be decently roofed and sided, as God intended. No nekkid dance clubs allowed!
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There, having gotten tracer’s mandatory pun-on-the-OP/thread title/comment by a poster post out of the way for him, I’ve freed him up to make a serious comment on the topic, if he so chooses. 
Thank you to everybody who participated in this thread, not just the ones who said I was “insightful”.
[sub]Sua, your comps to front row seats at Pussy Footin’ Around are in the mail…[/sub]
Here’s a link to the Miller case, for reference.
Also, here is the 1991 Supreme Court case of Barnes v. Glen Theater, Inc., which more specifically deals with nude dancing.
hijack here - i’ve never been a fan of strip clubs. i’m not sure what i’m supposed to do there. i’m not impressed with the dancing, so the entertainment is all in the naked body showing. so what am i supposed to do? sit there with a boner? jerk off between dances? what am i getting for my 20 dollar table dance if i can’t touch the dancer? i’m not fooled into thinking the girl is sitting on my lap because she finds me so studly. it’s like going to an expensive restaurant only to have the waiter parade sumptuous dishes in front of me that i’m not allowed to eat as i get hungrier and hungrier. i don’t get it. when i’ve allowed myself to be dragged to a strip bar, i’ve always thought i’d be better off in a regular bar hitting on regular women. that way if one pays attention to me at least i know i’m making some sort of social progress.
Truth is it is quite parallel indeed.
People who object to crack being sold in their neighborhood are not doing so out of concern for the poor crack users who are endangering their health. This deals with your first point.
A strip club will not necessarily make the neighborhood crime ridden (though there’s been some suggestion in this thread and elsewhere that it might). But it does give the neighborhood an atmosphere and character, much like selling crack. Someone opposed to crack but not opposed to strip clubs will be bothered by the crack dealer and not the club. You might be among these people. But for someone who is opposed to both, the objection has this basis.
SuaSponte
You are mischaracterizing the Miller decision in suggesting that it allows local communities to second guess the Constitution. The USSC ruled that the Constitutional right of free speech does not extend to obscene material. It is the definition of obscene that varies by community.
What would be interesting would be if the “community standard” was lax enough to allow for such exhibitions, but one official with stricter standards decided to outlaw it. I would imagine that this would not pass muster.
Italics mine.
Has anyone else noticed that this places a ceiling on the total number of adult establishments that can locate in the city? If NYC passed a law saying, “We will only allow 137 strip clubs/adult bookstores/etc. in the city,” it’s hard for me to imagine that that would pass Constitutional muster. But this is exactly what they’re doing, under the cloak of less conspicuous language.
Any thoughts, Sua? DSY? Any other lawyers in the crowd?
Izzy, I can’t speak for SuaSponte, but I find your distinction primarily semantic in nature. Regardless of the phraseology, Miller allows ‘local standards’ to shift the line between speech that is protected by the First Amendment and speech that isn’t.
RTFirefly
The nature of “obscenity” is such that it is inherently (possibly by definition, in fact) dependent on the reaction of people to it (e.g. the famous Potter Stewart line alluded to by Polycarp). Since we cannot legally define it separately for every single person, allowing it to be dependent on community standards is reasonable. The important, non-semantic, distinction which results from this is as follows. The difference in community standards does not change the laws that apply to the speech; they change the very nature of the speech itself.
Obscenity is a fuzzy area of law precisely because people cannot agree on what is obscene. Topless women? Full frontal female nudity? Full frontal male nudity? Simulated sex acts? Actual sex acts? Fetish sex acts? On the generally-recognized continuum of “soft-core” to “hard-core”, whether something is or is not obscene depends on who is looking at it.
When we’re dealing with something that is as inherently subjective as obscenity – which really is a matter of personal taste and represents the point at which a given expression becomes subjectively offensive – then community standards are a reasonable way to handle the issue. Girls walking around topless – okay or not? Well, are we in Provo, Utah, or South Beach, Florida?
The thing that I find interesting is not that obscenity should devolve to community standards – that seems to me to be a reasonable compromise and a practical recognition that Provo and South Beach do not have the same standards – but that the Court can’t even agree as to whether nude dancing ought to be considered protected speech, not subject to government infringement absent a compelling state interest, or merely a form of “expression” subject to reasonable government controls. That seems to stand for the proposition that whether or not your speech is protected depends on content, and I think the courts have been very strict in staying away from content-based restrictions in cases involving other types of speech or expression.
A woman gets on a stage in New York City, and removes her clothing while dancing.
A woman gets on a stage in Waco, Texas, and removes her clothing while dancing.
What is the difference in the “nature” of the speech? If I read your argument correctly, your assertion is that the “community standards” change the nature of the speech because of how the members of a community will respond to that speech. People in Waco may find the dance obscene, but people in New York don’t.
There are three problems with this. First, the speech (more accurately, expression) hasn’t changed; if we have a uniform system of constitutional rights, the speech should not be treated differently simply because it changed locations. Second, what is really happening is that the people in Waco don’t like the speech; the very point of the First Amendment is protect unpopular speech. Third, “community standards” inject subjectivity into the law, something we try very hard to avoid. “Rule of law, not rule of man.”
Sua
Taking your argument to an absurd extreme, one could claim the right to yell “fire” in crowded movie theaters. After all, the speech is the same - it’s only the location that is different. Point being that speech (or expression) is not defined merely by the physical act or actual words. Rather, by the message and ideas that are being communicated. These depend on the context, and on the way they are perceived by those on either end of the communication.
Change “respond to” to “perceive” and you have my position.
SUA:
But it obviously can. What is insulting or inciting in one place may not be insulting or inciting in another. And if varies not only by location, but by who is speaking to whom, and by intent. Cf: “nigga” between two friendly black people and “nigger” as a racial epithet. I don’t think we have “a uniform system of constitutionl rights” to the extent that we ignore context.
This begs the very question, as there is a well-settled exception for obscenity, so really it is more accurate to say “the very point of the First Amendment is to protect unpoplular speech (except obscenity, which is not protected speech).”
“Community standards” do not “inject” subjectivity into the law; they (or rather it, the theory) recognizes, in a responsive way, that obscenity is subjective. Whether or not something is obscene is a subjective call. That is where the subjectivity enters in, not through “community standards” which, to the contrary, represent a quasi-objective (akin to the “reasonable man”) means to make an inherently subjective judgment – i.e., is this obscene?
What would you suggest? A single standard for obscenity throughout the land, despite the fact that what is considered obscene obviously varies from place to place? And what would that standard be, anyway? What could possibly be an objective standard for obscenity? Or should we do away with the idea of “obscenity” entirely, saying instead that expression may never be infringed, no matter how offensive to how many or how little it contains in the nature of actual content?
I agree that subjective standards are to be avoided at all costs, but I think this is one example of a time when they really cannot be avoided. “Obscenity” is by it’s very nature subjective, and therefore any standard of judging it must be subjective as well – or at best quasi-objective (the “reasonable man”). Or else we just throw the whole thing out and pretend that nothing is ever obscene. I think that would be more of a legal fiction than the admittedly flawed subjective standard.
I absolutely agree that context can change speech; time, place, and manner come to mind. You can stand on the courthouse steps screaming your distate for the government, but you can’t do the same inside the courtroom. But with nude dance clubs, the context hasn’t changed - just the geographical location. The stripper is still in the appropriate forum - a dance club that bars minors and that has for an audience only those who want to see the stripper.
True enough, but see below.
But this is the problem - how can an objective right (free speech) be modified or limited by the purported subjective reaction of the population of a particular locale? It is an objective fact that a stripper from NYC, where her act was not only legal but constitutionally protected, moves to Bumfuck, U.S.A. and tries to ply her trade, she can be enjoined/arrested. Ergo, the stripper in NYC has more constitutional rights than the would-be stripper in Bumfuck. This directly infringes the principle of equal justice for all.
As for what I’d suggest: try to come up with an objective standard for obscenity. If we can’t, than we must do away with the obscenity exception. A just law must be a law that is equally enforced. Yes, I know my romantic view of the law is showing through again, but hey, I don’t think that it’s such a bad thing.
Sua
SUA:
Then why not geographic location?
So under this rationale, a bestiality club would also be okay, or a necrophilia club, correct? So long as its in an enclosed and voluntary forum, under this rationale the community standards – and the degree to which they object to having activities they consider obscene occur in their community – is irrelevant.
Because the objective right is in fact (and at law) limited by the subjective rider that obscenity is not covered by the right. Therefore the right (even if objective) would not be purely objective. I would add that I don’t think you can characterize free speech as an “objective right” anyway, since you have rightly acknowledged it can be limited by restrictions as to time, place, manner, and content, which in turn are supported by subjective considerations such as whether the speech (in the context of a particular time/place/manner) is calculated to inflame or offend.
Because her actions are subjective obscene in the latter forum but not in the former.
No, she does not. She has the same right to non-obscene expression. In neither location does she have the right to express herself obscenely. She has no more “constitutional rights” in one location than she does in the other. Obscene = not okay. Anywhere.
An equal protection argument? That doesn’t wash. The courts have explicitly said that varying standards for obscenity do not create equal protection problems, so long as the same standard applies throughout a given jurisdiction – i.e., Federal law or state law. You do not have the right to be treated the same under New York law as you do under Utah law in a myriad of ways, and this disparate treatment does not create an equal protection problem. “Equal justice for all” does not mean all people are treated exactly the same at all times in all locations. You know that.
Such as? If my grandma thinks its obscene for teenage girls to show their belly-buttons and Bob the Pornographer thinks nothing is obscene at all, how would we cobble together an objective standard?
Why? What is wrong with the “reasonable person” standard that recognizes obvious differences in community standards? Do you for the same reason advocate doing away with damages for pain and suffering? They are not objectively provable, either.
The law IS equally enforced. What is obscene is obscene throughout a given jurisdiction, and it is NOT okay anywhere in that jurisdiction. It applies equally to everyone. New York law applies to everyone in New York. Utah law applies to everyone in Utah. You appear to be asking that DIFFERENT laws (i.e., different obscenity statutes) be applied the same, even when they are different on their faces and arise in different jurisdictions. I don’t see much justice in that.
I don’t either; I just question whether it is workable as a practical matter.
Jodi wrote:
This points up another flaw in the Supreme Court’s logic. There is really no such thing as a “community standard,” since ideas about what is and is not “obscene” vary widely even within a single community. I know that my idea of obscenity is very different from that of the devout muslim down the street. Yet here we are in the same community.