DALLAS, TX — Despite the potential for strip clubs to add an estimated $40 million annually in “pole taxes” to state coffers, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wants legislators to enact a “one strike and you’re out” law that would enable authorities to close cabarets and other sexually oriented businesses the first time they make a mistake.Abbott made the call for tighter statewide regulation of adult businesses Monday during a meeting of the House Committee on Licensing and Administrative Procedures at Dallas City Hall.
“What I think would be a more effective way of addressing this problem at a statewide level, is that even though the problem may have been resolved at the local level here in the City of Dallas, we want to ensure that practices like this don’t occur anywhere in the State of Texas,” Abbott told the assembled state legislators.
Dallas strip clubs have been under scrutiny since November, when a 12-year-old girl worked for nearly two weeks as a nude dancer at Diamonds Cabaret. The girl told authorities she was forced into the work by two people with whom she stayed after she ran away from home for the fourth time in a year. She also said she told the cabaret’s management she was 19 but didn’t have identification to prove her claim. The club hired her anyway, she said.
Club representatives have not spoken publicly about the incident or another one in which a 17-year-old girl was discovered dancing in January. The couple with whom the 12-year-old lived face several charges — including sexual assault of a child — in connection with the incident. One of them remains behind bars in lieu of $450,000 bail.
The Dallas City Council in mid-April passed a revised sexually oriented business ordinance that allows authorities to revoke the license of any SOB found to be employing minors. According to The Dallas Morning News, “The new ordinance also requires clubs to do background checks and keep fingerprints of dancers.”
Abbott would like that law expanded to cover the entire state. In addition, he said he thinks all SOBs, including retailers, in Texas should have to register with the state and keep detailed records about all employees. Owners and managers of clubs that hire minors should face felony charges, he said.
Dallas adult-entertainment attorney Brent Dyer said prior to the Dallas ordinance revision, the State of Texas and most municipalities didn’t include license revocation among the penalties for violating Texas’ legal-age laws. Dallas’ newly revised ordinance only applies to strip clubs, but Abbott’s proposal to expand the provisions to state law and cover all adult businesses with licensing requirements and employee-registration rules is problematic, he said.
Although Dyer admitted there are valid concerns about underage sex workers, under Abbott’s proposal “Anyone who works at an adult business would have to be licensed by the state and fingerprinted,” he said. “For any number of reasons, employees [and employers] aren’t excited about that. For one thing, it’s expensive.”
Primary among the reasons the Abbott proposal concerns him, Dyer said, is that in the present election-year climate — with prosecutions of adult entertainment of all kinds ramping up to a fever pitch — it’s not unimaginable that pornography opponents could use the one-strike provision in an attempt to extinguish the adult industry in Texas.
“I wouldn’t put it past some of these folks [conservative anti-porn activists] to ‘set up’ businesses [particularly stores] in order to get their licenses revoked,” Dyer said.
