BRIGHTON, MI — “Pornography Is An Enemy Of The Family” read one sign, “Pornography Is The Gateway To Sexual Crime” proclaimed another.Several members of a Brighton-area community gathered last Friday for a holiday weekend protest aimed at Intimate Ideas, a store that primarily sells lingerie, but also offers a small selection of adult videos and other sexually explicit materials.
“This is an atrocity,” said Robin Blaszak, one of the organizers of the protest, according to the Brighton-based Daily Press and Argus. Calling pornography a “cancer,” Blaszak asserted “you don’t ignore it [pornography]; it will take over.”
Another resident of the area, Carol Johns, told the Press and Argus that she attended the protest for a more personal reason.
“I’m here because I have a granddaughter who aspires to be an actress,” Johns said. “Those are daughters, granddaughters and nieces that are doing that stuff in those movies, and it ruins their lives.”
Johns said her granddaughter lives in Hollywood, and has told her grandmother that she can get work any time – if she wants to work in porn, that is. Her own granddaughter refuses to go that route, because she has “seen it ruin other young women’s lives,” according to the Press and Argus.
Johns said she hopes her group’s protest will cause nobody to frequent the shop, so “they have to close down.”
Another of the protest’s organizers, Patrick Flynn, said the point of the protest was to alert other residents that “a destructive element to the Brighton community has come in and sat down.”
Officials in Brighton initially denied the application to open Intimate Ideas, but the owner filed suit in U.S. District Court against the City, asserting that the denial of his application violated his constitutional rights. Following months of negotiations, the parties reached a settlement, and the city council approved the agreement in August.
Under the terms of the settlement, the city restricts the amount of “adult materials” that Intimate Ideas can stock; adult materials cannot exceed 20-percent of the store’s merchandise, and the other 80-percent must be lingerie.
A sign posted outside the store warns that customers “must be 18 to enter,” and the store’s windows are covered with blinds to prevent passers-by from seeing the products inside.
The restrictions placed on Intimate Ideas aren’t likely to appease the protestors at Friday’s demonstration, however.
According to the Press and Argus, many of those present on Friday are also part of a group that was so upset by a window display at a local Victoria’s Secret that they began a letter writing campaign demanding that the store change its display or be closed down.
