AT ISSUE Can we bear the cost of over-priced goods until we can get better jobs?

Coming soon to a strip club near you … absolutely nothing!

Chalk it up to morality,but if the Toledo City council’s decision doesn’t get over turned in the courts, the Toledo strip clubs will be all but shut down. To me, this is worse than the porn ban in Bowling Green.

So what exactly did city council decide? The new rule “establishes a minimum six-foot separation between dancers and patrons, and requires those performers to be on 18-inch-high stages” and “explicitly prohibits patrons touching intimate body parts of dancers, and vice versa and any placing of money in or on the costumes of dancers.”

First, if and when these rules go into effect, the dancers will lose a majority of their income. If the dancers don’t make money, then clubs don’t make money. A majority of the money a dancer makes is made via lap dances or being stuffed in what little articles of clothing they do wear while they dance on stage. Both of these means will be eliminated and I highly doubt anyone will be inclined to tip quite as well from six feet away. In case you’re wondering, when showering in the dorms here at the University, you can be closer to naked people than under the new rules in the strip clubs.

Even if people were as inclined to tip as well from that distance, if you can’t get lap dances or stuff dollars down g-strings; why go to a strip club? To see scantily clad women? You could just as easily, and for the about the same price as going to the strip club, buy an issue of the soon-to-come National Geographic Swimsuit issue. What are men (and some women) supposed to do?

A lot of people (like one member of city council) simply don’t care about the loss of income to these adult businesses. They view exotic dancers as the scum of society and want them run out of town. To paraphrase the council member, the strip club brings all sorts of negative things to the area, such as “prostitution” and “used condoms” lying by the side of the road.

This seems to be a popular misconception. Strippers are not prostitutes. Strippers sell mild sexual fantasy, whereas hookers sell sex. Hookers, sometimes have pimps who keep them from getting injured or killed. Strippers have bouncers, who are large strong men who don’t allow you to touch the strippers at all.

It’s mainly for this reason I’ve never understood why women will not let their men go for a guys night out to the strip club, where the possibility of the men getting drunk and going home with a woman is zero to none, but will allow them to go on a guys night out to a bar, where hooking up with women is more likely.

I know what you’re saying, so they’re not prostitutes, that doesn’t make them great people. You might be right. But what kind of girl is a stripper? A BBC investigation discovered that one fourth of women working in strip clubs are full-time students. The extra money helps them get out of debt and pay for a college education.

The girls said they chose stripping over other part time jobs because they could earn two weeks worth of wages in just one night of dancing. If you’re reading this article in class right now look around, maybe someone in the room is a stripper.

Of course the adult entertainment clubs plan to fight this with legal action and other means including a publicity barrage featuring barely clad women distributing flyers on the streets of Toledo. So now, thanks to city council’s actions, instead of having adult entertainment behind closed doors it will now be on the streets for your children to see.

Finally, if you’re one of those people who think nudity is bad no matter what the financial need may be, allow me to remind you of the first amendment and the freedom of expression we have in this country.

So to the Toledo city council I say get of your high horse and retract your unjust decision.