David Mann of the
Evening News drew the short straw and witnessed one of the most inadvertently hilarious legislative decisions in recent memory, this one occurring in Sellersburg.
Following is the entire first part of Mann's article, detailing the Town Council's request to invite unelected bodies like Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana (ROCK) and One Southern Indiana (1Si) to participate in opening a Pandora's Box larger than any ever imagined by the likes of Steve Price.
Sellersburg regulates live adult entertainment; New ordinance requires licenses for businesses, entertainers
The Sellersburg Town Council is now regulating live adult entertainment businesses.
Under the ordinance, which was approved unanimously during a Monday night meeting, adult businesses and the entertainers working therein have to pay a $5,000 licensing application fee, with a yearly renewal cost of $4,000. In order to be approved for the license, they have to provide basic information such as name, Social Security number, date of birth and written statements from three “bona fide residents of Clark County setting forth that the applicant is of good moral character.”
The ordinance says the business must have the license posted at all times and entertainers themselves have to keep their license affixed to their person at all times. Further, it establishes a seven-member Adult Entertainment Commission empowered to issue the licenses. Also, if a license is rejected, the town keeps $1,000 of the application fee to cover regulatory costs.
The commission has to include one clergyman or minister, two Democrats, two Republicans, one representative from One Southern Indiana and at least two members have to be female.
Town Council President Brian Meyer, said the ordinance has been more than a year in the making.
“It came from seeing what other communities have gone through without an ordinance,” he said.
Recent enforcement of adult business regulations in Louisville could send businesses looking for a new place to set up shop, he said, noting that the town doesn’t have any establishments to which the ordinance would apply.
Town Attorney Perry McCall said the town modeled its ordinance after similar regulations in Spencer County. The town also sought input from Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana, also known as ROCK, a group that opposes the businesses around the region.
The ordinance applies only to live entertainment. Councilman Paul Rhodes said he would like to eventually amend it to regulate retailers of adult books, videos and accessories.
The measure was approved unanimously in two readings.
As for the suggested composition of the regulatory commission, why must there be a clergyman or minister?
If the council intends to violate every known church-state separation, can't it be inclusive and have a Druids or an Imam, too?
Why on earth is One Southern Indiana involved with this?
Why? Isn't a doomed model of oligarchic economic development enough for one organization's everyday activities?
Does it go all the way back to Kerry Stemler's infamous public tango with ROCK, the closest equivalent we have to the style and intent of the Inquisition?
Wasn't Stemlers pole (poll?) dance with ROCK so appallingly ridiculous that even Michael Dalby disavowed it?
R.O.C.K. on, One Southern Indiana ... but first, please answer these inconvenient questions. (2007)Speaking of dancers with 1Si-approved licenses dangling from their shielded boobies, will these same entertainers now become a staple of iSi's 5 o'Clock Network functions?
It might improve attendance, guys, but I suppose that the Ayatollah Wickens would prefer seeing them swaddled in parkas and furry caps, Russian-style, which is where Dostoevsky wrote ... well, you know.
You might not, actually; will The Brothers Karamazov survive the Town Council's future scrutiny?
I point to this passage: "Amend it to regulate retailers of adult books, videos and accessories."
If you think that such a clause would only benignly apply to the likes of Cleopatra's sticky offerings, you really haven't been paying attention to the history of censorship under the aegis of various Moral Minorities in American history.
Try reading about them ... if you can still find the book at Sellersburg's soon-to-be ROCK and 1Si-approved library.
One more thing which is relevant to New Albany.
I missed the last council meeting, but an attendee reports that Rev. Steve Burks, recently elected to the township board and a Republican primary candidate for council in the sixth district -- where NABC's original location does business -- asked if, given new regulations in Louisville, the council was ready to let the experienced folks from ROCK come in and help them craft an ordinance.
That'd be an
unconstitutional ordinance, sports fans, just like the one Sellersburg has now passed. Someone call a team of high priced lawyers, please, as overpaying to rectify constitutional frivolity seems to be the game ROCK wishes us all to play these days.
