1. Swingers safe to party at strip club
2. Here comes Folsom!
3. The Craigslist Experiment
4. Swingers law hearing likely
5. Obscenity charges dropped
6. Group seeks to stop partygoers
1. Swingers safe to party at strip club
2. Here comes Folsom!
3. The Craigslist Experiment
4. Swingers law hearing likely
5. Obscenity charges dropped
6. Group seeks to stop partygoers
Swingers safe to party at strip club:
Judge rejects petition to stop Coopersburg gatherings immediately
by Matt Birkbeck
The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)
September 23, 2006
A Lehigh County judge on Friday rejected an attempt by Coopersburg to put an immediate halt to weekend sex parties at a borough strip club.
Judge Edward D. Reibman said he denied a request for a preliminary injunction so he also could hear from the owners of the Silhouette Showbar at 111 E. Station Ave., which hosts the Club Kama Sutra swingers parties.
The petition was prepared Thursday by the borough and submitted to the court Friday morning. But it was not given to the defendants, who include Coopersburg Holding Inc. and the principals of Club Kama Sutra.
Borough Manager Dan Stonehouse said the legal paperwork probably will be delivered over the weekend in anticipation of a court hearing next week.
The borough's petition, Stonehouse said, claimed that the swingers club caused ''irreparable harm by operating in violation of the law'' and that its continued operation would cause residents to ''question the effectiveness of their government, and the municipality will have problems enforcing other zoning matters.''
Stonehouse alleged that the swingers parties violated five sections of the borough's zoning ordinance.
Only a handful of Club Kama Sutra members attended the first gathering on Sept. 2, but more than 30 couples took part in the most recent party last Saturday, according to a bar owner.
The bar owners said earlier this week that the building was zoned as a hotel bar/restaurant with adult entertainment, and claimed they were allowed to rent the rooms out to anyone.
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To read this entire article, go to: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/allentown/all-5swingerssep23,0,3845202.story?coll=all-newslocalallentown-hed
To respond, write to: the author at matthew.birkbeck@mcall.com or the editors at letters@mcall.com ; or comment at bottom of article.
Here comes Folsom!
by Mister Marcus
The Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco)
September 21, 2006
No one can dispute that the Folsom Street Fair is the biggest leather gathering in the world. As you read this, hundreds of leather-oriented people are here already and ready to play as only they can in "America's Favorite City" (according to the Convention & Visitors Bureau). There are scores of public and private parties going on every night culminating with the Mr. San Francisco Leather contest on Saturday night and of course, the Folsom Street Fair on Sunday, September 24.
Leather Pride Week kicked off last Sunday, September 17 with the annual Leather Walk that started in the Castro and wound its way to South of Market. Some $21,000 (and counting) was raised in another successful fundraiser for the AIDS Emergency Fund.
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To read this entire article, go to: http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=1169
To respond, write to: the author at HatchetQ@aol.com or the editors at barpaper@aol.com
The Craigslist Experiment
by Dan Savage (from the opinion/advice column "Savage Love")
via The Portland Mercury
September 20, 2006
[Q.] I'd love to hear you weigh in on the case of Jason Fortuny, the person who posted an ad on Craigslist posing as a woman looking for a dom male, and then posted all of the responses, including the pictures some men sent him. As a person who receives voluminous amounts of damaging and embarrassing e-mail from people who count on your discretion, I thought you might have an interesting perspective.
[A.] I've been following this fucked-up story, Chuck, and it pisses me off in so many ways that I hardly know where to begin. In what Fortuny grandly called "The Craigslist Experiment," he posed as a kinky woman and posted a sex ad with a photo, then invited "str8 brutal dom muscular" males "who like 2 give intense pain and discipline" to write and respond. Now, an experiment is a test designed to discover whether a particular theory is correct, and Fortuny's grand hypothesis basically amounted to this: Would extremely kinky men respond to a personal ad that they believed had been placed by an extremely kinky woman?
Well, what do you know – they would and they did, and in droves. That should have been the end of this experiment, but Jason wasn't really interested in seeing what sort of response his ad would get, but in exposing and humiliating the men who replied to his ad. Fortuny not only posted their responses online, he also posted pictures he had been sent – along with real names, work e-mails, phone numbers, physical addresses, and transcripts of chats he had with some of his victims.
So what are we to make of this?
Well, it reminds us that responding to personal ads is a risky business. You just don't know to whom (a sexy sub girl?) or what (a total asshole?) you're responding. But let's not overstate the risk: Millions of people post and respond to personal ads every day (perhaps a few hundred thousand less today, thanks to Fortuny), and until now no one has ever pulled such an asshole move. Still, anyone using internet personals should remember that people do lie, discretion is warranted, you shouldn't use your work e-mail, etc.
What strikes me as tragic about this mess is that the men who are suffering the most for the high crime of wanting to meet a kinky woman – the men who shared their real names, numbers, places of employment – were doing the decent, responsible thing. Women into BDSM exist, and they take out personal ads to find men who share their kinks. People like me tell submissive women (and men) to take some simple precautions before hooking up with a new person – get his real name, get his real phone number, have your first meeting in a public place, ask him to tell you where he works, ask for references. A kinky top is asking a kinky bottom to trust him – not to actually harm her, to respect her limits, to honor her safe word – and a top can earn that trust by sharing his real name, phone number, and other info that will allow the bottom to confirm that he is who he says he is.
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To read this entire article, go to: http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/SavageLove?issue=62722
To respond, write to: the author at mail@savagelove.net or the editors at mercuryeditorial@portlandmercury.com
Swingers law hearing likely
by Mike Goodwin
The Albany Times Union (Albany, NY)
September 20, 2006
SCHENECTADY — The City Council took a key step toward passage of a massive expansion of its adult entertainment law, giving preliminary approval to hold a public hearing on a law intended to force a racy Union Street inn to host swingers parties in industrial areas.
Members of the council's Development and Planning Committee said little before endorsing plans to host a Oct. 10 hearing on the amendment to the law. The entire council is expected to vote for the hearing Monday.
The amendment would give the city oversight over a number of adult businesses, but the measure was proposed after revelations that Bob Alexson hosted parties for swingers at his Union Street Bed & Breakfast.
Alexson said the parties are part of his private life, not the inn's business. But neighbors said the parties are intertwined with the inn and should be regulated by the city.
Dana Swalla of Phoenix Avenue and several neighbors have asked the city to force the sex parties to end or be moved to industrial areas.
Lawmakers want to expand the rules that forbid adult bookstores and strip clubs from existing anywhere but in industrial zones. The amendment would apply to hotels that offer hourly rentals for the purpose of sex, and to several other kinds of adult businesses, including pornographic movie theaters, escort services and nude modeling studios.
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To read this entire article, go to: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=518204&category=SCHENECTADY&BCCode=&newsdate=9/20/2006
To respond, write to: the author at mgoodwin@timesunion.com or the editors at tuletters@timesunion.com
Obscenity charges dropped
by Rachel E. Leonard
Spartanburg Herald Journal (South Carolina)
September 19, 2006
Prosecutors have dropped obscenity charges brought in January against two Movie Gallery employees as part of an agreement reached earlier this year that ended a related federal lawsuit.
The dismissals come nine months after Spartanburg County sheriff's deputies raided the store at 120 Garner Road, seized hundreds of adult videos and arrested two clerks.
Shawn Wesley Price and Tamika LaShonda Grier, both 23, were each charged with disseminating obscene material. Grier was also charged with disseminating obscenity to a person under age 18.
Attorneys for the adult novelty store Priscilla's, which officers raided the same day, and the Movie Gallery had taken the Sheriff's Office to federal court on claims of constitutional violations.
The stores later agreed not to sell certain material accused of violating the state's obscenity law, including materials depicting violence toward women, bondage and other sexually explicit acts. Most of the items seized during the raids were returned.
Obscenity dissemination charges are still pending against two employees of Priscilla's. Willingham declined to say whether criminal cases against Permethia Burnett Bradburn, 33, and Eliza Albertha Gathers, 23, would also be dismissed.
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To read this entire article, go to: http://www.goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060919/NEWS/609190329/1051/NEWS01
To respond, write to: the author at rachel.leonard@shj.com or the editors at opinion@shj.com
Group seeks to stop partygoers
by Jason Wermers
The News-Press (Southwest Florida)
September 15, 2006
At least 20 residents tried to stop people from going into a private, adult-themed "party" house in a southwest Cape Coral neighborhood, known as "The Other Oz".
Their efforts fell short when Cape Coral police were called by the woman living in the home after a verbal confrontation erupted between neighbors and party-goers.
The host of the parties, Christina Sheridan, 40 of 2028 SW 36th Ter., came outside during the verbal confrontation and called Cape Coral Police on a cell phone.
Four officers, including supervisor Sgt. John Lanza, arrived at the house at about 9:40 p.m. and spoke with Sheridan and a man identifying himself only as "William" for a few minutes. Then Lanza addressed the crowd of neighbors and warned them not to harass Sheridan or the party-goers.
William, a regular party goer, tried to explain to the neighbors that the parties were just "friends getting together to have a good time".
As he spoke to neighbors in front of television news crews, he had his arms draped around his fiancee on one side and his ex-wife on the other.
Lanza told the neighbors he knew of "The Other Oz" and its history in Fort Myers, as well as its recent parties in Cape Coral.
"I understand your concerns, that you have children in the neighborhood, and don't want this kind of activity going on", Lanza said. "But you cannot cross the line and harass someone on their private property".
Lanza added that police are investigating Sheridan's parties. But to this point, police have found no indication that the parties are an unlicensed business or that any illegal activity is taking place.
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To read this entire article, go to: http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060915/NEWS0101/60915058/1075
To respond, write to: the author at jwermers@news-press.com or the editors at response@news-press.com
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