The sex industry grows Small towns react The legal battle continues Nicollet - the moral battleground Exotic dance - is it art? The First Amendment to the U. Constitution guarantees free speech and freedom of expression. Those protections extend to adult businesses. While pornography and strip clubs remain hot button issues, the legal debate has shifted. So has its location. The argument is no longer whether sex-oriented businesses can exist. Now, the question is how to regulate them legally, as strip clubs and adult bookstores move into small cities and towns.
In , the U. Supreme Court narrowly agreed on a definition for obscenity. In response, a leading opponent of the adult business industry declared pornography, sexually explicit speech, and adult entertainment would soon be left to history.
Those predictions felt short. Instead, the sex industry has mushroomed into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. No one knows that better than attorney Randall Tigue. Tigue has spent his legal career in courtrooms across the upper Midwest representing strippers, club owners and bookstore proprietors. Tigue got his start 20 years ago, defending Ferris Alexander, a well-known adult business entrepreneur.
In the early s, Alexander was successfully prosecuted under a tough anti-racketeering statute. Alexander was sent to prison, and a new generation of entrepreneurs moved into Minnesota's sex industry. As a result, Tigue's client list has grown substantially, to include virtually all of the newcomers. Despite his crusade on behalf of free speech, Tigue instructs his clients not to talk publicly about their businesses.
But he is happy to explain why strip clubs have the right to exist. There are people who are offended by people of African-American heritage moving into the neighborhood, and the answer is you learn to live with it. That's a price of living in a diverse and free society," says Tigue. Opponents would say Tigue has craftily built his career hiding his clients behind the First Amendment. Those guarantees of free speech and freedom of expression mean adult businesses, bookstores or strip clubs, have a legal right to exist.
