Freedom to Express Your Boobies!

[SOB]

Bravo to the courts for sticking with our (Oregon's) constitution.  I've even seen one or two promising things from our legislature this year.  Things are looking up.

Story Link

Court overturns two sex-show laws

Oregon's justices rule that the right to free expression in the state is an absolute

PETER WONG
Statesman Journal

September 30, 2005

The Oregon Supreme Court, in two significant decisions Thursday, struck down a state law banning live sex shows and a city ordinance regulating nude dancers.

A majority of justices said that both violated the state constitutional guarantee of free expression, which the court has interpreted as one of the broadest in the nation.

The court has maintained for nearly a quarter of a century that most such regulations, including obscenity, are unconstitutional.

Both cases were watched closely for clues about whether the court would change course.

Stephen Green, a law professor at Willamette University, said Thursday's decisions go beyond whether strip clubs can offer lap dances or live sex shows to paying adult customers and whether government can regulate or ban them.

"When it comes to individual rights, the Oregon Supreme Court does not do a balancing test; we say the right of free expression is absolute," Green said.

"The only way it is infringed upon legally is whether you can prove that a law is aimed at conduct, not expression. Or it is a type of expression that the framers of the Constitution believed could be regulated."

Examples of exceptions are protection of minors -- the court ruled in 1996 that child pornography is not covered by the guarantee -- and restrictions on the time, place and manner of activities to shield unwilling viewers, captive audiences and neighbors.

The Oregon Constitution, which dates to 1857, says: "No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right."

Justice Michael Gillette, who wrote for the majority in both cases, said there is no historical exception under the protection of free expression that allows either the state law or city ordinance to stand.

He wrote, "Thus, it appears to us to be beyond reasonable dispute that the protection extends to the kinds of expression that a majority of citizens in many communities would dislike -- profanity, blasphemy, pornography -- and even to physical acts, such as nude dancing or other explicit sexual conduct, that have an expressive component."

The votes were 5-1 in both cases. One justice did not take part.

"These decisions continue to protect the right of Oregon families to decide for themselves what they want to read, see and hear," said Andrea Meyer, legislative director and counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, which has opposed broad restrictions.

Overturning ban

One case involved the 1999 criminal convictions of Charles Robert Ciancanelli, the owner of a now-closed Roseburg club, for promoting unlawful sexual conduct in a public show. Undercover police officers attended two private shows in a small room at Angels, where women kissed, touched one another, engaged in sexual conduct and touched the officers.

The court upheld Ciancanelli's separate conviction for promoting prostitution. He was in the Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario.

Lawyers for the Oregon Department of Justice asked the court not only to uphold the state law but to reconsider its broad interpretation of free expression. They lost.

"The state appreciates the court's analysis of the breadth of Oregon's free-expression clause," said Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Attorney General Hardy Myers. "However, we believe the framers of the Oregon Constitution intended to permit regulation of public sexual conduct."

Charles Hinkle, a Portland lawyer, argued for the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association, Oregon Association of Broadcasters, The Associated Press and several newspapers, including the Statesman Journal. They took no stand on either case, but Hinkle said they were concerned about a more restricted view of free expression.

"The court signaled in these decisions that it takes very literally the language of the Oregon Constitution," he said. "It will be a very high burden from now on for anyone to try to persuade a court that the free-expression guarantee does not mean what it says."

But Hinkle said the decision in the Roseburg case could open the way for more prosecutions based on the anti-prostitution law. He said it may curb not only live-sex shows but also films and photographs of sexual acts.

"The proponents of censorship did win a significant victory," he said. "Mr. Ciancanelli's conviction was affirmed. The decision may have been good for lawyers, but it did not do Mr. Ciancanelli any good."

Dance distance

The other case involved a 2000 incident in which two managers of a now-closed club in the Eastern Oregon town of Nyssa were fined $185 each for violating a 1998 ordinance that required nude dancers to perform at least 4 feet from patrons. The city later extended the distance.

"It makes me proud to be an Oregonian that we have broader protection of free speech than is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution," said Laura Graser, a Portland lawyer who represented the managers of Miss Sally's Gentlemen's Club.

"You cannot go into my clients' establishment and see things unless you walk through the doors and pay $5. Patrons are required to be adults, and women can make a choice to be dancers."

Jim Westwood, a Portland lawyer who argued on behalf of Nyssa, said the city regulated nude dancing but did not ban it.

"You do not have a problem with prior restraint of an activity if you are simply regulating the time, place and manner of its expression," Westwood said.

Christy Monson, a lawyer for the League of Oregon Cities, helped write arguments in support of Nyssa's ordinance.

"We believe the court could have struck a balance between the right of dancers to express themselves and the right of communities to regulate for the health, safety and welfare of citizens," she said.

A spokeswoman for the Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation for Recovery, based in Portland and critical of the sex industry, said the issue is not about free expression.

"Nobody has won a suit for the right to touch Bono of the band U2," said Patricia Barrera, its director of community education. "Barriers at the Rose Garden have not been challenged on the issue of freedom of speech. This is really about sexual access to women and children."

Common complaint

Religious conservatives, neighborhood groups and local officials have complained that the court's recent rulings have spurred the growth of the sex industry in Oregon. Barrera said the state's largest city should be called "porn-land."

But voters rejected ballot measures in 1994, 1996 and 2000 to restrict the state's free-expression guarantee, most recently to allow zoning of sex shops.

Justice Paul De Muniz was the only dissenter Thursday.

"Sexual conduct on the street, in the park, or the village square has historically been the subject of criminal regulation," he wrote. "... Unlike the majority, I cannot conclude that legislative regulation of public sex acts must stop at the supposed theater door."

Justice Rives Kistler did not take part in either case.

He sat on the Court of Appeals, which on split decisions in 2002 upheld the state law and city ordinance that the Supreme Court overturned. The earlier decisions, one of which he wrote, held that the restrictions were "historical exceptions" to the free-expression guarantee because public nudity and sexual conduct were regulated when the Oregon Constitution was written.

Next up, Oregon vs. the Feds in yet another challenge to our twice voter supported assisted suicide law.

[Hangtime]

jeezuz grapefruit. lost a coupla carbiners on that wall of text, then no hot squab shots?

you bastard.

[SOB]

Hehe, come out to Oregon, I'll buy ya a lap dance!

[Godzilla]

Deleted.

5- Flamebaiting, trolling, or posting to incite or annoy is not allowed.

[Yeager]

my brother lives in oregon....poor bastard.

[Hangtime]

My brothers in Oregon. His wife want's to give me a lap dance. She weighs 300 pounds.

No thanks. But I remember the offer the next time some fat chick trys to kill me.

[Gunslinger]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO OO!

I may lean right but I love me a good strip club and HATE govt regulation there of a capital enterprise.  

The left should be arguing this is a woman's right to choose.  It's worked for them before.  Either way This is good news.  I don't like govt regulating morality.  If you don't like it don't go there.  If your husband goes there and you don't like it divorce his ass.  

This is pretty much common sense, something this great country is trying to forget.

[SOB]

Originally posted by Hangtime
My brothers in Oregon. His wife want's to give me a lap dance. She weighs 300 pounds.

No thanks. But I remember the offer the next time some fat chick trys to kill me.

LOL, well I was thinking of something a bit more compact than our gal Sinclair.  

[Hangtime]

"daaaahhhaaammmmmm... if our wives looked like that they'rd be no such thing as viagra."

[Xargos]

As long as I don't have to walk the streets and see a couple of studmuffins doing it on the sidewalk.

It's a 10 foot law here in S.C. and it sucks.

[Pooh21]

this state rocks

except for them thinking I am not competant to pump my own gas myself without me 'sploding myself.

Hell maybe in winter it will be cool




Anyways i saw on the news, some guy was whining "it is family money they spend in there,Family money!!!" you know what if the wife dont think or dont like where the money is going, then divorce his arse.

[Debonair]

You can pump your own gas, if it is into a plane

[Hawklore]

Originally posted by Xargos
As long as I don't have to walk the streets and see a couple of studmuffins doing it on the sidewalk.

It's a 10 foot law here in S.C. and it sucks.

they took that, " I wouldn't touch you with a 10ft pole" phrase a bit too seriously..