LINCOLN PARK, MI — The financial backers of a Hustler Club planned to open in Lincoln Park next year aren’t particularly concerned that, according to local ministers who are protesting the development, God doesn’t want their club in the city. They’re more concerned about city fathers going to what they say are “blatantly unconstitutional” lengths to ensure the club doesn’t open.Developers of the planned $4.2 million club joined forces with the city’s Park Theater, which sells adult products, and sued the city in U.S. District Court this week. The lawsuit, which claims Lincoln Park’s 3-year-old nudity laws effectively prohibit adult entertainment, seeks to have the ordinances tossed out on constitutional grounds.
The club was approved by city planners, who said they couldn’t stop the project because state law allows topless dancing. City ordinances, however, outlaw all public nudity, according to Brad Shafer, an attorney who represents developer HDV-Lincoln Park, a Hustler Club licensee. Lincoln Park’s laws haven’t stopped the city’s only other topless club from operating, though, partly because, according to City Council President Tom Murphy, they don’t ban topless dancing. He said the ordinances were not aimed at adult entertainment, per se, but at the undesirable behaviors — like drug use and prostitution — often associated with cabarets.
Whatever the city’s goals, it’s clear the local religious community has a more clear-cut agenda. The Lincoln Park Ministerial Association in November launched a 52-day prayer crusade designed to “provide a spiritual and moral wall of protection for the community,” Faith Christian Assembly Senior Pastor Patrick Bossio Jr. told The Detroit News.
The association also has asked the Michigan Liquor Control Commission to deny alcoholic beverage licenses to any adult clubs or businesses that want to locate in the community.
“We are taking a stand it’s a sin factory,” Frank Julian, another pastor with Faith Christian Assembly, told the News.
Lincoln Park’s clergy aren’t alone in “hating the sin” of adult entertainment. In 2006, Detroit’s city council declined to grant a topless entertainment license to a club there. A federal judge eventually ordered the city to rewrite its unconstitutional strip-club regulations.
