The lap of democracy

The wonderful thing about this country is that we still allow (mostly) local sensibilities to govern local conditions. If Las Vegas wants to be a wide-open sin city, for example, and Seattle wants to be a politically correct have for lefties, so be it.

Oh, wait, I got that a little wrong. Seattle is the city in which voters just rejected a ban on lap dances and tough restrictions on strippers:

Mayor Greg Nickels, worried that a rash of new clubs might open, proposed a series of rules: Dancers had to stay 4 feet (1.2 meters) from customers. Patrons couldn't give money directly to dancers. The clubs had to increase their lighting and get rid of any private rooms. In addition to dissuading clubs from opening, the regulations would be easier for vice cops to enforce, the mayor's office said.

Considering that Seattle's rules were relatively strict for a big city to begin with — no alcohol at clubs, no nude women except on stage — the dancers feared for their livelihoods.

And Las Vegas is the city that passed tough new restrictions on lap dancing, just upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court's majority opinion, written by Justice Nancy Becker, upholds an ordinance that states no erotic dancer "shall fondle or caress any patron, and no patron shall fondle or caress any dancer."

In upholding the city code, the high court noted its wording was identical to a county ordinance in Washington state upheld by a federal circuit court of appeals 20 years ago.

Justices said the Las Vegas ordinance properly attempted to strike a balance between "protected expressive conduct" - erotic dancing in this case - and negative secondary effects such as prostitution, venereal disease or drug- and alcohol-related crime.

The high court also said the rule doesn't violate a requirement for "alternative channels for communication of the message conveyed by the expressive conduct."

Even if the erotic dancers' message "is slightly less effective without caressing and fondling, their message is not significantly impaired," Justice Becker wrote.

In both cities, the "expressive conduct" argument was made, although it was taken to exquisitely absurd extremes in the Nevada case, which just shows what a joke some are willing to make of the First Amendment. A provision seen as vital to protect the political give-and-take necessary in a constitutional republic has been reduced to a justification of groin grinding in strip clubs.

Given what is now prohibited in Las Vegas, by the way, many of us have apparently had a mistaken impression of the purpose of lap dancing.