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March 24, 2006
Brothel ads will level out the playing field
I agree with the folks at the R-J and not because it is the flagship publication of Stephens Media, which also owns this publication and the Tonopah Times-Bonanza & Goldfield News. I agree because this is clearly a First Amendment issue and it could only serve to benefit Nye County brothels, which in turn would benefit the tax base here in the land of anything goes - as long as anything goes in somebody else's neighborhood. In order to defend the First Amendment without losing credibility, supporters of our basic freedoms have to take the good with the bad. Speech, assembly, religion and the right to redress grievances with the government are among the chief freedoms that provide America with its libertarian foundation. That means Joel Osteen gets to preach scripture and send a message of hope to millions of Bible-based churchgoers and Larry Flynt gets to publish lurid photographs of buck-naked women playing a rousing game of Twister. Or so I've been told. The First Amendment means the Ku Klux Klan has the right to march down Main Street, Alabama with sheets covering their faces and newspaper editors have the right to denounce the Klan - only without the benefit of anonymity. It means hip-hop entertainers have the right to rap venomous nonsense that may or may not inspire violence, and if we want to publish cartoons poking fun at the Prophet Mohammad - or the Pope or a rabbi - well, then, we will. Government has never been able to legislate morality but it tries every day to reach out to its so-called family values constituency. The results have often been disastrous. The war on drugs is one example of government trying to stomp out what some consider bad behavior. Besides the obvious hypocrisy, drug laws and mandatory sentencing guidelines have ruined hundreds of thousands of lives and have overfilled the nation's prisons with people who engage not in behavior that is immoral, but simply prohibited by an over-reaching, indebted leadership. Government functions much more efficiently when it concentrates its resources on criminal behavior that is malicious and heinous on its face. Cracking down on murder, sexual-based crimes, corruption, robbery, burglary and those who exploit the young and the old is noble and just - and is hardly arguable in even the most savage societies. It is when government attacks behaviors that not everybody sees as inherently evil that things become murkier than a mud hole. Prostitution, like abortion, is a subject that polarizes the populace. Nobody, it seems, is ambivalent when it comes to using sex as a commodity. They are either for it or they are against it, and there's little room for fence riders. And then there is the question of commerce. In Nye County, where the adage "You do your thing and I'll do mine" is more than a carryover from the freewheeling '60s, prostitution is legal but it isn't thriving. Why? Because Clark County is doing very little to arrest the $20 crack whores and the $2,000 call girls. Why come to Pahrump when you can get a tuna sandwich delivered directly to your hotel room overlooking the Strip? The reason for this overly graphic illustration is to hammer home this point: Just because government declares certain activity as illegal doesn't mean people are going to change their ways. Look at how freely we ignore traffic laws. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has gone on record in support of brothel advertising. I'm not sure if this is a First Amendment or revenue enhancement issue for Nevada's largest newspaper, but it's a position I'm positively certain Nye County brothel owners endorse with wholehearted enthusiasm. We agree, but it would be wise for brothels and those who would publish their advertisements to establish a few ground rules. For instance, a full-page, full-color ad featuring a fully naked woman astraddle a man wearing nothing but a grin would probably not fly in Las Vegas and it certainly would not appear in the Pahrump Valley Times. The key to the brothel industry's longevity in rural Nevada has been its ability, for the most part, to stay under the radar. It would be wise to continue that history of discretion; a stable past could evaporate like drops of water tossed on a hot skillet if the advertisements could be construed as offensive and in your face. It doesn't matter if your interest lies with the First Amendment or it lies on a $300-an-hour working girl down at the south end of Homestead Road - we need to consider the sensibilities of our readership in its entirety. If we turn our back on the people who live life with a high-bar moral code and believe prostitution defies the will of God - we will lose their respect and their subscriptions and nobody will be looking at the newspaper for a good deal at a local brothel or anywhere else. Remember, there are far more churches in Southern Nevada than there are brothels. Let's not allow our zeal for the 10 amendments to cloud our judgment when it comes to a huge body of readers who believe in the 10 Commandments. Write to Doug McMurdo at dmcmurdo@pvtimes.com. |
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