If you dislike strip clubs, stay out. If you do not want businesses near your home do not buy homes near commercial areas.
(SALEM, Ore.) - I just finished reading the self-serving pro-censorship NIMBY screed of Julia Allison, chief petitioner for Measure 54 that she is trying to use to attack free speech and expression in the Oregon Constitution.
We have heard all the sophistry from her kind before. In fact there was, not too many years back, a similar attempt to promote censorship and paint Oregon's 'strongest free speech and expression rights in the nation' standing as a Bad Thing.
I do not consider it to be a bad thing. I consider it to be a good thing, and one of the things that makes this state the best to live in.
Ms Allison's panties are all in a bunch because when Pressley's opened on Commercial SE she and her merry little band of NIMBYs could not stop it. She seems abused of the opinion that South Commercial is part of her 'neighborhood' and that nothing she would not love being right next door to her prissy little home should be allowed there.
Tough Noogies Ms Allison.
If she did not want commercial businesses near her home she might have considered buying a home not right near South Commercial. How is that for a grand exercise by Captain Obvious? But this logic unfortunately just flies through the vacuum between her ears apparently.
Also she and her merry little band of censors are not really big, it would seem, in the honesty department. My what amazing role models they are for their kids they love to exploit, huh? Rape the Oregon Constitution in the name of our kids that we present horrible role models to. Great plan, Ms Allison.
She claims, directly and indirectly, that clubs such as Pressley's are a 'danger' to neighborhood kids, but not surprisingly cannot seem to present any evidence that supports that clubs such as Pressley's are any more of a 'blight' or 'hazard to the neighborhood' than any other average bar. Also, she keeps ignoring that the business in the spot Pressley's now occupies also served alcohol.
Yet not surprisingly we never heard a peep out of Ms "Protect the Kids" Allison until it was an adult business.
That 'censoring for content' aspect is why the neighbors ran afoul, as they should have, of the Oregon Constitution. They were not opposing the business for any harm it had caused. They were opposing it solely based on the content, as perceived by the censors. As far as I know there has been no harm to the neighborhood from Pressley's. I am positive that if there had been, we would have seen Ms Allison riding through town naked to proclaim and shriek about it. (Well maybe not naked, but the rest).
I am not a regular patron of strip clubs. I have been to a couple, sure. And by some amazing stroke of fate I, alone, was not turned into a raving sex maniac with instant and uncontrollable urges to rape and pillage the surrounding populace upon exiting the club. My self control skills must be off the charts!
No one is, or should be, forcing the performers in these clubs to perform. If anyone has any evidence of such they should report it to the authorities immediately. But the women and men I ever spoke to who performed actually enjoyed what they were doing. They were not coerced.
And they could make much more doing what they enjoyed than they could at a 'day job.' Also, nobody is forcing Ms Allison or anyone else to go into and patronize these establishments. If you do not like strip clubs then you should stay out of them. It should not give you any right to deny any patron who wishes to go in the right to do so, nor any right to deny these performers the right to make their living how they wish, harming no one.
The likes of Ms Allison just refuse to get it, If they get their wish and are allowed to censor that which THEY disapprove of, what is to stop someone else from censoring something else this other person or group disapproves of? And little by little the majestic mountain that is our precious Oregon Free Speech and Expression right becomes nothing but a pathetic little pile of rubble. This is something that should never be allowed to happen.
If you dislike strip clubs, stay out. If you do not want businesses near your home do not buy homes near commercial areas.
But just as you want your rights respected, you need to respect the rights of others... even if you disagree with what those others have to say or how they choose to reasonably and legally express themselves.
And bottom line - if you want to be seen as 'moral' you should not lie, misrepresent or fabricate through the use of sophistry to 'support' your points, or your points become pointless as you are exposed as a self-serving NIMBY hypocrite.
Much as Julia Allison has been here.
Pro-Censorship NIMBY Screed No Answer for Strip Clubs
Salem-News.com