When you thought you knew the law …
The law is my passion, because by using the law you can make sense of this crazy world that we live in. This works, except where the law is silent.
My rant for today … did you know that in Rhode Island, it is legal for teens to work in strip clubs? Not cleaning the bathrooms, but dancing onstage. [SHOCK]
Providence police recently discovered that teen job opportunities extend into the local adult entertainment world while they were investigating a 16-year-old runaway from Boston. The girl told detectives that she worked at Cheaters strip club this spring, and the police got tips about other underage girls working at another club on Allens Avenue.
That’s when the police found that neither state law, nor city ordinance bars minors from working at strip clubs. Those under 18 can’t buy pornography, and no one may take pictures or film minors in sexually suggestive ways. But the law doesn’t stop underage teens from stripping for money. Even if the police saw underage boys or girls on stage at a strip club, they wouldn’t be able to charge them or the club owners with a crime.
Who knew that Oliver Twist’s Fagin had settled in the U.S.’s smallest state? Shouldn’t the law protect minors from the Fagin’s of this world? The decisions that teens make effect the rest of their lives. The reason there is a classification for minors, is to protect us from nefarious scoundrels and unwise life changing decisions.
And, I’ll bet you think that Rhode Island is alone … but NO!!! Iowa and Nevada have similar laws. Amanda Milkovits reports :
An Iowa county judge ruled last year that a striptease by a 17-year-old girl at a strip club was artistic expression protected by the First Amendment. The state attorney general’s office has asked the state Supreme Court to review the ruling.
Nevada, meanwhile, doesn’t let anyone under 18 work in casinos or in public dance halls where there is alcohol — and there are no strip clubs in Nevada without one or the other, or both, said Cartwright, of the attorney general’s office. Minors aren’t even allowed to deliver mail to brothels.
Dallas handled the situation with more appropriate judgement:
After a 12-year-old girl was found dancing nude in a club in Dallas last year, the city council swiftly passed rules barring minors from strip clubs and automatically revokes for a year licenses for sex businesses caught employing or entertaining minors.
I’m not a prude, but I know right from wrong. And having minors perform onstage as strippers definitely falls in the WRONG category. Passive inaction can not be counted on to make this right. Those who live in these states should be forming a public outcry so loud that I can hear it from Colorado to change these laws immediately.