ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Disdain for Adult Business Misdirected
Mark R. Matthews states that illegal activities will accompany adult businesses (“Cities Must Take a Stronger Stand Against Adult Businesses,” Orange County Perspective, Jan. 14).
Other than the unsupported opinion of Janet La Rue, he offers no proof of the relationship of adult businesses to illegal activities. Nor does he provide any evidence of the magnitude of this “problem.”
Yet he advocates municipalities single out businesses catering to a sexual theme and pass ordinances of doubtful constitutionality with the express purpose of making it too expensive to fight, forcing those business “somewhere else.”
He does not seek to regulate cigarette sales, where the link between that business and death has been established. There is a clear link between lawyers and white-collar crime (and the billions of dollars lost annually to such crime is manifest), yet Matthews does not suggest lawyers be forced, through legal blackmail, somewhere else.
His zeal to restrict lawful adult businesses is thus exposed as an attempt to impose his own puritanical world view on others. His proposal should be viewed in a continuum with the attempt to make the loser in civil suits pay legal fees for both sides.
These so-called solutions are an abuse of the legal system and a cynical attempt to restrict the rights of those with whom he disagrees.
JONATHAN WEBB
Orange
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