Salem Area

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thats a sweet deal!


Ore. high court rules live sex shows should be allowed
10:21 AM PDT on Thursday, September 29, 2005

By CHARLES E. BEGGS, Associated Press Writer


SALEM -- The Oregon Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional Thursday a state law against conducting live sex shows and a local ordinance regulating conduct of nude dancers.



kgw.com graphic


Both restrictions violate the Oregon Constitution's guarantees of free speech and free expression, the court said in a pair of 5-1 decisions.


The free expression rulings continued the court's modern pattern of broadly interpreting state constitutional rights as forbidding virtually all regulation of obscenity.


The state constitution, adopted in 1859 says, "No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write or print freely on any subject whatever."


Justice Michael Gillette, who wrote the majority opinions in both cases, said it "appears to us to be beyond reasonable dispute that the protection extends to the kinds of expression that a majority of citizens in many communities would dislike -- and even to physical acts, such as nude dancing or other explicit sexual conduct that have an expressive component."


One ruling involved the owner of a Roseburg adult business featuring live sex performances in private rooms.


Charles Ciancanelli was convicted of the crime of promoting a live sex show after undercover police paid women to perform sexual activities while the officers watched in the "performance rooms" at the business, called Angels.


The Supreme Court tossed out that conviction although it did affirm Ciancanelli's conviction of promoting prostitution.


The high court's other ruling overturned an ordinance in the city of Nyssa that required performers to stay at least four feet away from patrons at nude dancing clubs.


Owners of "Miss Sally's Gentlemen's Club" in the small Eastern Oregon town were fined $185 each for violating the ordinance.


Religious conservatives, neighborhood groups and local officials have complained that the Supreme Court's rulings have led to a thriving sex industry in Oregon.


But voters three times have rejected ballot measures that would have restricted the adult entertainment industry, most recently in 2000 when a measure to allow zoning of sex shops was defeated.


Both rulings on the sex show laws reversed the Oregon Court of Appeals.


The lower court, in split decisions, contended that bans on sexual performances should be considered valid as "historical exceptions" to free speech rights because there were restrictions on public nudity and sexual conduct when the constitution was adopted.


Supreme Court Justice Paul De Muniz dissented from both of Thursday's decisions.


De Muniz said he could not conclude that "masturbation and sexual intercourse in a `live public show' " is a form of speech that the drafters of the Oregon Constitution sought to protect.


He said he disagreed with the idea that "regulation of public sex acts must stop at the theater door



http://www.kgw.com/news-local/storie....a609f6bf.html

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Thats right baby moan all you want!

Public Sex: Protected Speech
in the news
The Oregon Supreme Court ruled today that a public display of sex was constitutionally-protected speech. OPB summarizes the case:

This case began in 1998 when Roseburg police arrested strip club owner Charles Caincanelli. Two dancers in his establishment were performing sex acts in a show. The defendant argued the performance was expression, protected by the state constitution. Two lower courts disagreed, saying public sex acts fall into a historical exception to free speech protections....

In an opinion by Justice Michael Gillette, the court said the framers of Oregon's 1857 constitution protected speech on any subject whatever .

Oregon has among the most liberal speech protections in the US. One of the issues raised by the case was whether the ruling would promote prostitution--an issue raised by dissenting justice Michael Gillette, who wrote

that the crime of promoting prostitution is not protected speech. That's what Ciancanelli was doing, Gillette wrote, by profiting from the sexual conduct of his dancers. But that raises the question of where a constitutionally protected sex show ends and where the crime of promoting prostitution begins.

That argument was apparently not persuasive to the other justices--Gillette was a lone dissenter in a 5-1 decision. However, the Court did say that public sex acts may violate other laws--but not the speech protections in the Constitution. In a separate ruling, the Court ruled that a Nyssa law requiring a four-foot buffer between dancers and patrons was unconstitutional.

September 29, 2005 | in the news
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Permalink: Public Sex: Protected Speech

http://www.blueoregon.com/2005/09/public_sex_prot.html

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Dancing to the same tune
Oregon's founders -- and voters -- had a broad view of free
Saturday, October 01, 2005
expression, which the Supreme Court recognized this week

The Oregon Supreme Court's decisions this week on regulating adult businesses were bound to be a bombshell no matter how the court ruled.

If the court had upheld a state law banning live sex shows and a Nyssa nude-dancing ordinance, it would have reversed 18 years of judicial precedent. If it overturned the laws, it would poke another stick in the eye of lawmakers who've struggled to regulate nude-dancing clubs and other adult businesses in neighborhoods throughout the state.

By a 5-1 vote, the court took the second route. In overturning those laws, it continues to move Oregon's concept of free expression well beyond that of any other state. It's an honest and fair reading of the constitution but comes at a cost. The court's course since its landmark 1987 decision in State v. Henry also has helped make Oregon a national mecca for the sex industry and its unsavory side effects.

This time, at least, the court explicitly and implicitly offered some useful advice to frustrated lawmakers.

The Nyssa ordinance required nude dancers to remain at least four feet from their customers. It was clearly a regulation directed at the dancers and the court was right to overturn it.

In the other case, the challenge to the state law came from Charles Robert Ciancanelli, who operated an adult establishment in Roseburg and had been convicted of promoting live sex shows and of prostitution-related crimes. The court bought only part of his argument.

It overturned the sex-show law, but specifically rejected the contention that the prostitution-related convictions also involved free expression.

In other words, the court told lawmakers, there are ways to regulate antisocial conduct but they involve addressing the conduct itself, not the forms of expression that might, conceivably, sometimes lead to the conduct.

We don't believe, as some apparently do, that this decision paved the way for rampant public lewdness. It did, however, reaffirm that what people want to watch behind closed doors is pretty much their own business in Oregon. We suspect many Oregonians don't actually agree with that. The court's decision, though, offers the most protection against a government -- or a nosy majority, for that matter -- that is all too capable of overreaching in its efforts to regulate private behavior.

The court also rejected the argument that Oregon's founders didn't mean to protect "expressions" such as nude dancing and live sex shows. Justice Paul De Munoz may have forcefully dissented, but the majority concluded that the founders clearly meant to protect unpopular forms of expression.

The court could have cited even more persuasive evidence of constitutional intent. Oregon voters, after all, rejected efforts in 1994 and 1996 to trim back the free-expression clause of the constitution. If our 19th century founders had no idea where their constitution would lead, the 20th century's voters knew the modern-day specifics and their implications.

Naturally all of this has generated talk of going back to the ballot to roll back Oregon's free-expression protections. We think that ought to make everyone a little nervous.

Sometimes the only thing worse than a vice is the overzealous effort to stamp it out.

http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials...760.xml&coll=7

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Marion County

Prostitution sting leads to 6 arrests

December 23, 2005

A prostitution sting using a female Marion County sheriff's deputy ended with six arrests, officials said Thursday.

The sting began at about 6 p.m. Wednesday. It was conducted on Lancaster Drive NE near State Street, Lancaster Drive NE near Ward Drive NE, and Silverton Road NE near 47th Avenue NE.

Those arrested and taken to the Marion County jail, cited and released were: xxxx, 38; xxxxx, 26; xxxx, 38; xxx, 41; xxx, 32; and xxxx, 25, all of Salem.

-- Cara Roberts Murez

http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/a...512230331/1001