From the NY Times:A Manhattan judge on Thursday ruled that a 2001 city law was unconstitutional in seeking to reduce the number of stores and clubs that offer a mix of sexual content and other material in neighborhoods where X-rated establishments are banned.
The law sought to plug what the city considered to be a loophole in the 1995 zoning change that banned “adult establishments” from residential neighborhoods and from being within 500 feet of another such establishment, a school or a place of worship.
The 1995 law defined an “adult establishment” as any business where more than 40 percent of its material was sexually oriented. By the end of the 1990s, the city came to believe that many of the so-called 60-40 establishments were shams that kept a few shelves of innocuous material to disguise the true nature of their business.
So in 2001, the city broadened the definition to include criteria that would have required most of the 60-40 establishments to close or move to industrial areas.
On Thursday, Justice Louis B. York of State Supreme Court ruled that the mixed-use establishments were not shams and did not create a public nuisance in their communities, and that the city had sufficient tools to close any establishment that skirted the 40 percent rule.
12 comments:
OOOOOOH.....AAAHHH!
Thank God!
What a mess in my pants.
In a discussion of the case attached to his decision, Justice York wondered whether the city’s failure to study the negative impacts of the 60-40 establishments suggested that “what the city is really regulating is the content of expression, clearly a violation of the plaintiff’s rights to freedom of speech.”
As far as being a neighborhood nuisance, I think bars and restaurants rank much higher.
Most porn stores are pretty dead, the internet is killing them.
To segue on the above, porn stores never really were a public nuisance or affected the quality of life and yes some bars do affect the quality of life. But what I feel really is a public nuisance & affects the quality of life for everyone (especially a person speaking who lives in Jamaica) are absentee property owners of vacant lots/homes that become trash dumps and the owners who never clean them up, slumlords who do not take care of their apartment buildings allowing tenants to do whatever it is they want (illegal conversions, loud music, garbage everywhere, fights, etc.), the destruction of 1-2 family homes to build very cheap, low quality apartments that attract the kinds of people who affect the quality of life in communities. Yet these issues rarely get addressed by politicians and city leaders, let alone something done about it. Priorities in New York are never straight. Porn was just a very easy target but never really was an issue of quality of life or being a public nuisance. A neighborhood was never truly affected by one of these types of stores. Give me a porno shop anytime over a slumlord or property owner of vacant lots any day.
Now you are starting to figure things out Joe - look at the newsletters from the pols - they think bias attacks against (for example) people with sexual issues or the nutrition of day laborers or the renaming of streets are the most pressing issues.
Now look at the civic climate of Queens - say, for example, is Queens Civic Congress screaming like you ... or are they hosting events for pols so the blocks thier leadership lives on has its curbs painted or the like.
Gives nice photo ops with beaming pols and the Queens civic leadership singing kumabaya.
did the conversion from family movies to hard core porn movies at the EARLE theatre in the 1960's in Jackson Hgts. contribute to community immorality and crime against women ?
I cannot speak for Jackson's Heights in the 60's but there has been no proof whatsoever that porno contributes to crime against women. Studies do show that poverty contributes to crime and that low economic areas have higher crime rates than other areas, including domestic abuse, but there are no conclusive studies that show that porn leads to violence against women or leads to rape of any person. Anyone who commits crimes against women will commit them regardless of whether this person watched porn or not. Considering that in this day and age with the internet,a large percentage of people watch porn and there has been no huge increase in crime against women due to so many people watching porn. If watching porn was the case there would be a huge spike in crimes against women since the advent of the internet and that is simply just not the case. Now would a person who has a tendency to commit crimes against women to begin with be more apt to go out and do it after watching porn, that is possible (just as being drunk might increase that particular action), but the need to commit crimes against women are already embedded in that type of person's value system to begin with. You just cannot correlate a direct link of porn with violence against women.
Anon No. 6:
You know, I think that there might just be a few more reasons than that. It's sort of like blaming the Johnstown Flood on a leaky toilet in Altoona.
#7 it is interesting that you mention "studies" in general to make your point, but do not specifically detail NYPD Vice Squad data from the Jackson Hgts. section, from the 60' to the present ?
#8...my early years were spent in (Morellville) Johnstown,Pa. Engineer Morrell warned that the poorly constructed dam would burst.it did after 10 straight of rain and melting snow in the mountain.
Queens Civic Congress
is an ineffectual group of pompous idiots.
Unless their opinions are backed by the binding force of vote that can change the law...it's all meaningless show with no blow!
The pols ride over their opinions with ease.
Anon. No. 9:
That was my point.
where is the proof of "your point" ?show us the nypd stats. they exist if you pursue them. maybe you do not want the truth exposed ?
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