SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Salt Lake City, UT residents on Tuesday night proved they don’t need the adult industry’s help to expose their children to adult materials.Nevertheless, the adult industry got the blame for that and more at a city council meeting during which a fractious discussion about the proposed relocation of a retail boutique that sells sex toys, adult videos, and other adult merchandise in addition to more “mainstream” novelties occupied much of the agenda.
More than 100 people packed council chambers in an effort to put a stop to Blue Boutique’s plan to move into new digs a few blocks from its current location. They brought with them children as young as four who witnessed a graphic display of the store’s merchandise put on by their parents.
“If you’re offended [by having sex toys] in these chambers, you should be offended for our neighborhood,” resident Fred Conlon told the council after placing two sex toys on the dais, according to a Deseret Morning News report. According to the paper, he was summarily escorted from council chambers by the police.
At issue for what might have been called an angry mob in any other context was the city’s categorization of Blue Boutique as something other than a sexually oriented business. According to the city, the store doesn’t qualify for the designation because less than 15-percent of its “retail floor or shelf space is devoted to merchandise that is excluded from minors.”
Despite the presentation of an anti-Blue-Boutique petition bearing more than 1,000 signatures and impassioned pleas that the council re-evaluate the store’s classification, the city probably can’t take any significant action to prevent the move, according to City Attorney Ed Rutan. Even if the city were to revise its zoning ordinances or rework the 20-year-old sexually oriented business code, Blue Boutique has vested land-use rights in the city, so new laws wouldn’t apply to it.
The store plans to open at its new location in mid-December.
