Posted on 04/03/2005 8:35:10 PM PDT by sociotard
Strip club a winner vs. LDS Church
Fight isn’t over: A jury is expected to decide if the downtown Crazy Goat is a public, private nuisance
Salt Lake City officials may now regret the decision, but they were right to allow stripping at the downtown Dead Goat - aka Crazy Goat - Saloon, a 3rd District judge ruled Wednesday.
The LDS Church certainly regrets the city’s decision and had sued over it. But Judge Denise Lindberg sided against the church on two major claims.
One of the saloon’s attorneys declared the semi-nude strippers are here to stay. "This is a major victory, and we’re going to be there a while," Andrew McCullough said. "I intend to go down tonight [Wednesday night] and suggest to everybody we have a big party."
But the church’s fight is not over. It maintains the saloon, at 165 S. West Temple, is a public and private nuisance. Those arguments are expected to go before a jury. The church’s attorney declined to comment.
In her 29-page ruling, Lindberg deals with unsexy issues surrounding the sexually oriented business (SOB). The church argued the city erred in granting the SOB license in 2003 because the saloon, while set back from the street, is too close to West Temple. The city forbids SOBs from locating within 165 feet of such "gateway corridors," presumably to prevent passers-by from seeing sights associated with a strip club.
But noting the dancing takes place underground, Lindberg scoffed at the argument. Neither the church nor the city has "suggested how SOB activities occurring in an underground portion of the establishment . . . would manifest themselves in ways that would affect the gateway corridor. . . . [The] court cannot conclude that the saloon’s occupancy of a windowless, below-ground premises creates or exacerbates any of the problems that the 165 [foot] setback requirement was designed to mitigate."
The church also argued the city shouldn’t have granted the license because the City Council had passed a temporary ordinance barring downtown SOBs before the saloon received its license. The church said that ordinance should have applied to the Dead Goat. But the temporary regulation - which later became permanent - was passed in response to the Dead Goat’s application. Lindberg said the city attorney was right to decide in 2003 that the saloon deserved the license despite the new rule.
Salt Lake City has played an ambiguous role in the court case. The church sued the city, but city officials, including Mayor Rocky Anderson, oppose the strip club. Lindberg has pointed out the strangeness of a city attorney (the defendant) sitting with church attorneys (the plaintiff) during oral arguments. She noted in her ruling that the city has done little to defend its decisions to grant the SOB license. In fact, the city now argues the SOB license should be revoked.
On the nuisance claims, the LDS Church fears the saloon will interfere with its redevelopment of its 20 acres of property to the north. It plans to revamp the Crossroads Plaza and ZCMI Center malls.
But McCullough predicts the church will lose on those counts as well. "If we are, in fact, [operating] within the city ordinances, the next logical step is we’re not a nuisance. I’ll give you a 98 percent [chance] this is over and we win."
That doesn’t mean the club will remain in place. The owners of the building in which the saloon leases space have put it up for sale. The nonprofit Open Mind Foundation closed on the property last week, though the sale is not final.
Bill Martin, who helps run the Crazy Goat, said dancing will continue under the sale unless the new owners - who cannot allow alcohol sales on their property according to their bylaws - buy them out. "If they’re not happy, they’re going to have to negotiate us out of there," Martin said.
hmay@sltrib.com
I did do a search beforehand, but if this is a repost, my apologies are offered in advance.
Good for the strip club, the church don't run the town, and if its members don't like it, they don't have to go there.
(and if the patrons don't like the church, they don't have to go there)
As much as I'd like to hear a senior LDS spokesman yell "Goat lie! Goat lie!", I'm guessing it's not going to happen.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Ya' seen two,ya' seen em' all.
Yeah, but there is always the hope for a mutation.
Is this a requirement for the path toward exhaltation?
I think a good place for a church is near a bar....think about it.
"But noting the dancing takes place underground, Lindberg scoffed at the argument. Neither the church nor the city has 'suggested how SOB activities occurring in an underground portion of the establishment . . . would manifest themselves in ways that would affect the gateway corridor. . . . [The] court cannot conclude that the saloon’s occupancy of a windowless, below-ground premises creates or exacerbates any of the problems that the 165 [foot] setback requirement was designed to mitigate.'"
I don't know.
Looks like the law says there must be a 165' set-back.
Looks like the judge has said the law didn't really mean what the law said.
Looks like more judicial tyranny to me.
www.deadgoat.com/
Not sure if its the same place, but It probably is.
After all, there IS a separation of church and state, and isn't this area part of a state? We can't have a church where someone from the state might wander in, can we? No we can't, as has been ruled on many times by federal judges in the past.
How those Christians ever thought they could get away with that "In God We Trust" jazz on the coinage and paper money! And now they want an actual church, nay a TEMPLE, to not only reside in a bona fide city that is clearly a part of a state, but they want to argue that they should be given some control over what SOB's inhabit the neighborhood. Well I say, Enough is enough ! It's clearly time to run this crowd right out of town.
/ sarcasm
Adult joints don't bother me if they're kept low-profile.
I don't like the idea of small kids asking what "LIVE NUDE DANCERS" means, every time a family drives by an obnoxious-looking establishment.
looks like it...
"....city shouldn't’t have granted the license because the City Council had passed a temporary ordinance barring downtown SOBs before the saloon received its license."
So the temporary ordinance barring them was already in place - and it later became permanent - """ What part of those city regs already in place does the judge not understand?
Judge thumbs nose at city ordinances and people blame church>
Yup. that sounds right (sarc)
Strip clubs = prostitution, drugs, violence,
This is NOT the freedom the founding fathers had in mind..
Licentuousness is not freedom...it's slavery...
What would the founding fathers do...the vast majority of the founders that is.
You're certainly full of yourself.
Any time activist judges are kicked in the teeth by anyone...I am pleased.
Yes, exactly. Of what value is morality without choice?
The Temple is a sacred place for the people of the LDS faith. How would people react if a strip club was opened within a few yards of St Pauls cathederal in the Vatican? While there are many that would rather not have the club in SLC at all, the problem that many have is its proximity to the Temple.
I wonder if there is documentation to give an indication. I have a feeling that Franklin would be OK with it, Jefferson, maybe, Adams, definitley not OK. Madison, and Hamilton, not sure.
As for myself, I think the club should be allowed to exist, but I also think it within the bounds of local government to make that decision.
Pictures of Franklin are very popular in strip clubs (or so I'm told).
What is needed here is the location of the joint. If it's out on some secondary highway, away from houses, churches, schools, etc. or "in town?"
I see your point, but I think that equality before the law is the premise of our country. As long as the club is legal, it should have as much right to be near the temple as the temple has to be near the club.
There's what is legal and what is right -- the difference between "could" and "should" often makes all the difference in the world.
In some areas that won't be welcome.
Its not all about "Choice" here...
Very true. However, it is vital for our freedom that we continue to be a nation ruled by laws rather than a nation ruled by men.
I do acknowledge that local government has the right to solve this - in either way.
What if the strip club had been there first, should they have to move because a major church moved across the street?
Perhaps, but I'm gonna keep checking out that theory as long as I got eyesight.
You just put an image in my head of the Mormons traveling across the great salt lake in the 1800s and seeing a strip club in the distance...
And yes, there is often a chasm between what is right and what is legal. That's where a lot of hostility on this board comes from...obviously the bar owner is going to win. But just as obviously, he probably could have avoided many of the headaches, past, present and future, by applying some common sense.
Then the bar owner is a moron (and I don't mean that as a reference to Moroni)-- sorry if the name is spelled incorrectly, I'm not a Mormon.
Listen -- guys who want to go to a strip club will drive 30 miles, no problem. They would actually probably prefer the club to be "out of town" since it would offer less of a chance to have their car recognized in the parking lot by neighbors and friends of wives.
Try putting a trash dump in the middle of beverly hills...I will bet you new zoning regulations will pop up in short order.
"Its not all about "Choice" here..."
In a free country, it is, actually about choice. Stipulating, though, that there must be rules of conduct and ethics which apply to all.
I got stopped (twice) for walking in Bev Hills. :(
Why ever the bar owner wants to be near the temple is a mystery to me. Seems like it would be bad for business.
But I did notice that Church and State streets do run parallel to each other in Salt Lake City.
If not, there is your problem...
Symbolic strip joint...I love it.
No, I had on jeans and a t-shirt. I was in the process of escaping from a brunch at which the main topic of conversation was "crushed shells" or pebbles for driveway covering. Granted, it's one of the most hotly debated and important issues of our time, but I just couldn't take it anymore. The police -- or private security -- were good enough to drive me back to my hotel.
"We knocked on their doors at home."
It shuts them up when you say "Oh, that is the cult you are shilling for".
I agree with you. This is terrible offensive to people of the LDS faith. Location, location, location,
It's key in this fight. You want to open a strip club, that's your business. But don't put it right next to someone's place of worship.
What I want to know is whether the fight involved mud or jello.
Look at it another way -- a church is bad for a strip club's business. The owner of this establishment is obviously an idiot.
Idiots have every right to operate a business.
Yes that do -- but thankfully those businesses tend not to last. Bar businesses are not kind to idiots, morons and others of their ilk.
I want to be sympathetic to that point of view, but, in all honesty, prohibiting one kind of business because it is too near a church seems like a classic case of "making a law respecting an establishment of religion."
If the judge overrode an ordinance, that's another matter, though.
Who in the world has the time and inclination to pass out anti Mormon literature to congregants as they go to their church? It sounds anti American, at the least, or worse.
>> It shuts them up when you say "Oh, that is the cult you are shilling for".
Technically, all religions are cults (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cult)
Not to be confused with the occult ;-)
The point is, We were always polite.
It was the late great Lewis Grizzard who answered critics of a local strip club thusly:
"And so I say unto you godly people, if truly you seek a profound religious experience, then go ye unto the Gold Club, and SEE some of the BEAUTIFUL THINGS which God Himself has made!"
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