From the Report of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Working Group on the Regulation of Sexually Oriented Businesses (1989):
“The Working Group heard testimony that a concentration of sexually oriented
businesses has serious impacts upon the surrounding neighborhood. The Working
Group heard that pornographic materials are left in adjacent lots. One person
reported to the police that he had found 50 pieces of pornographic material in a
church parking lot near a sexually oriented business. Neighbors report finding
used condoms on their lawns and sidewalks and that sex acts with prostitutes
occur on streets and alleys in plain view of families and children. The Working
Group heard testimony that arrest rates understate the level of crime associated
with sexually oriented businesses. Many robberies and thefts from “johns” and
many assaults upon prostitutes are never reported to the police. Prostitution
also results in harassment of neighborhood residents. Young girls on their way
to school or young women on their way to work are often propositioned by johns.
The Flick theater caters to homosexual trade, and male prostitution has been
noted in the area. Neighborhood boys and men are also accosted on the street. A
police officer testified that one resident had informed him that he found used
condoms in his yard all the time. Both his teenage son and daughter had been
solicited on their way to school and to work.”
You people are insane! I find it ironic that so many so-called liberals are really quite fascist when it comes to anything that opposes their own particular point of view. Your views on the 1st Amendment are a joke! You can’t mitigate the bill of rights. And, no, most people don’t and shouldn’t accept limitations on their fundamental freedoms when it comes to “order and safety.” First of all, there’s no issue with “order and safety” when it comes to an adult book shop. It’s not as if you’re dealing with people running around shooting each other or driving drunk. If you don’t like the shop – don’t shop there!!! Simple solution! I don’t use or like porn, but I won’t try to ban it, either. Free speech is free speech. The fact that a few judges have agreed with you means nothing! Judges agreed with Plessy vs. Ferguson for almost 60 years. So what! Judges aren’t perfect. Your attempt here is a blatant and direct violation of the 1st Amendment. If you continue with this, I will be glad to call the ACLU and have them take you on directly. You people need to grow up and realize that living in a free society entails having to endure some things you DON’T LIKE!!! The world’s not perfect – GROW UP AND GET USED TO IT! You can’t ban everything you don’t like. There are plenty of right-wing nut jobs in the Bible belt who would like nothing better than to ban homosexuality. They could come up with just as many arguments as you that homosexuality degrades family values and has a negative impact on communities. Do you believe them? Would you tolerate banning open displays of gay love and affection if the majority of the people in community thought it was “best” for the town? How is this any different? Honestly – I would love to hear how in the world you could justify this in a rational argument without resorting to either “majority rules” tyranny or vague rhetoric about community values. How can you directly equate this with the letter and spirit of the 1st Amendment? You people are fascists, pure and simple. You know, the Nazis believed that Jews were degrading their communities. They had plenty of “evidence” to back up their claims. So, let’s go one better than banning this adult book shop. Let’s burn all their books! Better still, let’s round up all purveyors and users of porn and put them in camps so we can keep them away from the rest of us “civilized” folk. Maybe we should neuter them so they can’t pass their depraved values on to the next generation. Hell, why not save a lot of expense and just gas them all now? I hear there’s a sale on Zyklon B at Wal*Mart- go get a case now and start the revolution.
This comment, which advances no defense of porn we haven’t seen before, shows many of the characteristics of previous pro-porn comments. It uses misdirection to try to change the issue from porn to homosexuality and Nazis. It invents an extreme caricature of our position to make us look unreasonable. It ignores the great deal of evidence presented on our blog about the harmful “secondary effects” of sexually oriented businesses on their surroundings. These effects threaten to impinge on local residents whether or not they patronize an adult business.
We are not advocating censorship, but mindfulness about porn and a few modest zoning and health regulations to address local residents’ legimate, well-documented concerns. Experience has shown these regulations can be enacted without excessively infringing on free speech. Have the Massachusetts towns of Fitchburg, Oxford, Dartmouth or Douglas become benighted pits of fascist hell due to their own adult-use ordinances?
If the ‘1st Amendment is Absolute”, I suppose the person who made this comment would defend (currently illegal) child pornography as well. But let’s ask them. Do you?
This is the stuff to focus on.
Accounts and statistics of nieghborhoods, and how such a shop would impact Noho.
Point to Hartford, and the porn shops off 91, that are zoned near industrial areas.
Don’t fight pornography, but direct where it takes form, and emphasize how shops impact the community.
– A Noho Lover
Misdirection? Isn’t that YOUR defense? Just more empty rhetoric and no logic. No, I don’t defend child pornography, because child pornography is illegal. But adult pornography – between/among consenting adults – is legal and is protected by free speech. And the parallel between discrimination against gays and Jews is 100 percent valid – and you have offered no logical defense against it. The Nazis had reams of “evidence” that showed that the Jews were degrading their society. Has your “evidence” been published in scholarly journals and been peer-reviewed for statistical validity? BTW, you are all cowards for publishing this site anonymously. You should list your names and contact information on here. And, BTW, I’m not defending pornography – I’m defending free speech. Something you’re ADMITTEDLY opposed to.
This is the stuff to focus on.
Accounts and statistics of nieghborhoods, and how such a shop would impact Noho.
Point to Hartford, and the porn shops off 91, that are zoned near industrial areas.
Don’t fight pornography, but direct where it takes form, and emphasize how shops impact the community.
– A Noho Lover
So you concede our point that freedom of speech is not absolute. You accept that it’s OK for some speech, i.e. child porn, to be illegal. We’re not saying that more speech should be made illegal, but we do want people to accept that freedom of speech must compete with other values, that there is a balance that must be negotiated and adjusted over time.
Yes, much of the evidence we cite has been published in scholarly forums, such as this paper on the effect of porn on “sub-clinical psychopaths”. If you feel a specific piece of our evidence is wrong, why don’t you critique it as we have done with several pro-porn arguments (example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4)?
Our contact information is published prominently in the left-hand column of every page. As for our identities, it’s on our open letter to the Goldbergs and in numerous newspaper articles, many of which are linked from this blog. The slightest investigation will discover them. We don’t want to make it too easy because of the many personal attacks that have been directed at us.
We certainly appreciate that some people are more comfortable focusing on the secondary effects of adult businesses, rather than taking on the subject of porn itself. However, we do feel people should take a hard look at the nature of today’s porn and its effect on people. We reorganized our sidebar on the left to make this information easier to discover.
Dear Ammendment,
I was playing in front of my house when I was five years old. Early in the evening a 30yo man came to me and took my hand. He had a small bottle of red paint and said I could have it if I went with him. I went. He took me to a garage not far from my house which was littered with porn. I remember feeling panic when I saw the strange pictures. He pushed me on a dirty mattress and put his penis in my mouth. When I started to cry he pulled my hair and told me he would kill my mother and my dog. I made no more sounds. He urinated in my mouth and would not let me spit it out. I remember looking out a high window and willing someone to come. Nobody did. He did various other painful things to me and kept his hand over my mouth. He smelled like cologne. I hate cologne. Finally he entered me. It was all hot knives and burning and I saw stars. Then everything went black. I woke up and he was gone. I heard my mother calling my name but I stayed quiet because I didn’t want him to kill her. I just stayed there. At one point I urinated and the searing pain returned. I screamed into my arm, but tried to be quiet. Finally I looked around for my paint and when I couldn’t find it, I went home, where my mother began yelling at me until she saw the blood.
I underwent reconstructive surgery, but it didn’t really work. Intercourse is painful for me and I’ve spent most of my adult life alone. I have had 15 years of therapy which resulted in a greying of the shame and fear, but not its erasure. Whenever I see a man who resembles him I have to stop myself from running into traffic, or into trees, or anything. My marriage did not survive. I am nothing but what he left in the garage, and am not sure I ever will be anything else.
Even with all this I recognize an adult’s right to purchase pornography. I just ask that it be kept away from children. There are too many children there. Each one a potential human adult. Not quite like me. Please support its relocation to an industrial area.
Please.
Dear Adam Cohen and Jendi Reiter, No Porn Northampton,
I live in Longmeadow. Recently I received your mailing regarding some other people living in Longmeadow possibly renting to an adult business in Northampton. After reading your letter, I have decided not to support your campaign, and I would like to tell you why.
First, you contradict yourself. You claim to oppose pornography. Yet your letter contained some extremely graphic quotations from pornographic films, and you sent this letter, I assume, to every house in Longmeadow! In doing so, you put very explicit text possibly into the hands of every child in every household in my town. Even though you were quoting from these videos to make a point, you were still quoting some extremely detailed and offensive texts, and now every child in Longmeadow is able to read them thanks to your mass-mailing. You essentially put written pornography into the hands of all 16,000 or so residents of Longmeadow, doing more to spread pornography than this Kenneth fellow could do in months of running his business.
I am twenty four, but I have a younger brother living in my household who is under the age of 18. What if he had opened my mail for me the day your letter arrived, as I sometimes ask him to do? You would have just put pornographic readings into the hands of a minor.
Second, I find it ironic that your letter describes Northampton as “liberal.” I always thought that the word “liberal” implied tolerance and open-mindedness, not censorship as your organization seems to advocate.
I, too am offended by the filth of pornography. I find it misogynistic and disgusting. But we live in a nation with a Constitution, which has a First Amendment protecting freedom of speech. Just because I find pornography offensive, does not give me the right to prevent another adult from viewing it. As long as the people featured in pornographic material are consenting legal adults, then that material is protected under the First Amendment.
I sure would like to get rid of Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner and all those creeps. But if we censor them, who do we censor next? Someone a little less offensive? Political dissidents? Opposition politicians? Once we permit censorship of the worst materials, it immediately becomes easier to censor others. And isn’t a diversity of ideas and viewpoints what makes Northampton such a special place?
Third, how do you define what “pornography” is? Your definition is vague. If your definition is “material that depics people nude or in sexual acts” then you would need to ban many great paintings by Picasso, Degas, Rubens, and other artists. Suppose there was an exposition of Picasso nudes at one of the many fine galleries of Northampton. Would you try to ban that? Hey, if you read his biography, Picasso was certainly a misogynist. It still does not make his nude paintings pornography. Rather, they are some of the greatest examples of western art.
Furthermore, how do you define an “adult business?” Pride and Joy, one of the most well-known stores of Northampton, which sells Gay and Lesbian oriented products, rents adult videos. How about Raven Used Books, or Food For Thought books? They occasionally sell erotica books. Once you start down the road to censorship, where does it end? You would have to shut down half the businesses on Main Street.
In conclusion, while I find pornography revolting, I will not support your campaign. Please do not send any more mailings to my house, and especially into the hands of the minors who live there. I hope your efforts to bring closed-mindedness and prudery to the great city of Northampton fail.
Thanks for your comments. The letter was sent only to registered voters, so we do hope minors will not come upon it unawares.
It is indeed ironic and unfortunate that we felt a need to cite graphic material in our letter. We take no pleasure in publicizing it. We do this only so the public will know the nature of what Capital Video sells, and understand why we are so concerned about it.
We conceive of the letter as surgery, or a vaccination–short-term pain for a larger gain.
Our hope is that this mailing will help prevent Capital Video from injecting its products into Northampton on a daily basis. The proposed location, less than a mile and a half from I-91, suggests the region would be impacted as well. Even if you don’t shop in the store, it will affect you in two ways. It is likely to make its area of Northampton less safe, less comfortable to walk around, and less economically vibrant. Capital Video’s products also educate viewers to treat women badly, look down on fidelity, and engage in mindless sex without regard to love, commitment, disease, pregnancy or children. Capital Video’s products are like rocks aimed at values many people cherish, and the Goldbergs have the power to say no to this at 135 King Street.
The fact that many people find it unpleasant to investigate or discuss the nature of today’s pornography helps enable porn merchants to slip into towns like ours without sufficient debate. After careful consideration, we decided that holding some of Capital Video’s wares up to public view would help people understand what’s at stake, and how toxic porn has become today.
We made several attempts to communicate privately with the Goldbergs over the past few weeks, generally by Express Mail. The information in Wednesday’s letter will not be news to them. We received no response. We decided it was time to widen the debate.
I believe all of your other objections (e.g. censorship, tolerance, slippery slope) are addressed in our FAQ at NoPornNorthampton.org. It’s in the left-hand column. I’ll hope you’ll give this a look.
Art museums and galleries generally enhance a neighborhood. Property values and tourism increase. Consider, for example, the neighborhood around the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York City. The same cannot be said for adult businesses. It might be worthwhile to reflect on the differences.
The State of Massachusetts has defined adult business and sexual material for us, so we draw on that. These definitions have been found to be useful by the people. We are very concerned not to damage the cultural richness of Northampton. That’s why we support the mayor’s efforts to regulate only the location of large adult businesses, those with 1,000 square feet or more of adult material on display. This will spare all the bookstores you mention.
Slippery slope arguments aren’t very persuasive. The people go back and forth on the issues as conditions change. In America, they approved alcoholic beverages, banned them, then approved them again. It’s time to accept that the people have brains and can adjust when they see things are out of balance.
Speaking of out of balance, that’s what we have with large adult businesses. Callous business owners have taken advantage of some people’s blind faith in the First Amendment to impose real harms on real neighborhoods. The people have a right to ask porn merchants to compromise.
Anyone who wants to be off our mailing list, just send a request to info@nopornnorthampton.org. Thanks.
I am one of the sizable number of people posting here who is not enthusiastic about porn but nonetheless feels circumspect about moves to legislate its presence in our own Northampton. I’m also disappointed that there hasn’t been more of this kind of debate about the kinds of businesses moving into Northampton and the greedy rent-gauging that makes it all but inevitable that Main Street will very soon be more accurately called Chain Street.
If the nature of a business is of such a concern to this community, shouldn’t we consider legislation to limit chain stores and corporations, businesses owned by distant millionaires who have no stake whatsoever in the health and vitality of Northampton? I do not want to see Capital Video on King Street anymore than you do, but I think limiting the size of certain businesses is problematic because a small store cannot generate the income of a larger store, and it seems unfair to relegate certain types of business-owners to a lower tax bracket than others. Instead of size, shouldn’t ownership be a contributing factor in how we welcome or pass up potential businesses in Northampton? Local heroes, anyone? People who live here obviously care about the community more than people who don’t, and whether they’re selling porn or coffee, they’re going to be more thoughtful and conscientious about how they run their businesses. That standard of judgment seems to me to show much more decency and common-sense than blanketly dictating to some kinds of businesses how large they can grow and how much income they have a right to.
One other comment: most of your articles and reports refer to that side of the sex industry that offers live sex workers–prostitutes and strippers. This seems very different to me than a store selling pornographic materials in terms of clientele and other potential effects on the neighborhood.
I certainly agree that many aspects of local ownership are appealing. I get the feeling it can be tricky to write that preference into laws, but a few people are trying (see Shays2, for example). I encourage you to attend Sustainable Northampton meetings that the city holds from time to time.
The 1,000 square foot size threshold for adult businesses aims to preserve the pedestrian character of downtown King Street. The city is concerned, among other things, that a large porn shop in that area will create a pedestrian “dead zone” that will harm other businesses in the area.
The adult use legislation now being considered by the city covers all kinds of adult uses, from adult bookstores through live nude shows, so we have tried to address a wide range of adult enterprises on the blog. People should also keep in mind that although Capital Video isn’t currently planning to install porn viewing booths at 135 King Street, those plans could change as they did last year in Wethersfield. Also, there are strong links between pornography and prostitution.
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