The Missouri House of Representatives' Committee on Local Government was in session early this morning, and the main topic on the agenda was SB32, the omnibus anti-porn bill that would force most businesses that carried any adult products to require a $5 entrance fee and to pay 20 percent of their adjusted gross revenues to a special school tax fund.
Sen. Matt Bartle, the sponsor of the bill, was on hand to pitch it to the lower house, and brought two bill supporters with him.
"One was from the Moral Majority," recalled Nellie Symm-Gruender, a Missouri adult retailer who attended the hearing with her husband. "The second person was a young lady who used to be a dancer, who now was a born-again Christian. Her whole thing was, exotic dancing is a dangerous business; she's had people spit on her and scratch her, and on and on; it's just an embarrassment; she prays every day for all the dancers in the world. One of the representatives asked her what she was doing now? She's waiting tables. 'Do you make as much money?' Well, no, she didn't make as much money."
The Gruenders were accompanied by at least 35 opponents of the bill from all over the state, including former Free Speech Coalition board member Dick Snow, who owns the Bazookas nightclub in Kansas City, and an assortment of other adult store and cabaret owners.
"One of the more interesting ones was a gentleman who has a mom & pop video store, mainstream video store that has what he calls a 'discreet room in the back' that has adult material; you have to be 21 to go in," Symm-Gruender said. "But he had heartburn because he was now going to have to charge everyone who entered that room $5. But somebody else told him, 'If you look at the way the bill reads, you would have to charge everybody entering your store,' which made him even more unhappy about this."
All of the 16 committee members were reportedly present for the day's testimony, and several appeared unhappy with some sections of the bill, which was approved by the state Senate late last month.
"There were a lot of questions about why did Bartle think he needed to take zoning away from the local government?" Symm-Gruender recalled. "It seems they [the zoning commission] were doing a good job. The taxation, he [Bartle] really got beat over the head with, and by the end of the committee meeting, he was going, 'If you don't like the taxes, take 'em out; just take 'em out. Let's take the taxes out. Just forget about the taxes.'"
Rep. Edgar G.H. Emery did much of the questioning of the witnesses, according to Symm-Gruender, and it appeared to her that Emery had a pro-religious agenda that he was anxious to put on the record.
"He questioned me about what I thought an adult was," the 40-ish Symm-Gruender recounted, "and I said, 'You know, that's not for me to decide; it's for the legislature to decide and I'm the one that abides by it. It's 18 in some situations, 21 in other situations.' He asked me if I'd ever been an exotic dancer, which was a question out of the blue. Of course, I was flattered, but the poor guy must be blind."
"One of the representatives said, 'You know, I do have a store like this in my district, and it happens to be in the middle of a corn field'," she continued. "He asked Bartle, 'Exactly why would you think the property values in that corn field would go down?'"
For scheduling reasons, discussion of the issue was limited to 70 minutes, and although several witnesses against the bill testified live, at least another 20 indicated that they would be submitting written testimony in opposition to SB32. Symm-Gruender herself submitted a copy of Free Speech Coalition's latest 'White Paper' on the adult industry, to which she had added statistics specific to her home state.
"Another one of the interesting people that testified was John; he has owned an adult bookstore in downtown Columbia for 13 years," Symm-Gruender said. "John said that since he's been there, they have had a church move in across the street, and he looked at the guy who was asking all the religious questions, and he said, 'You know, I have to admit, I was worried about them ruining the neighborhood, but so far, we've lived together very well. They bring me barbeque whenever they have barbeque.' And he mentioned all of the other businesses that had moved in around him; everyone lives together very happily; he doesn't have any crime, etc., etc."
"There was also one Missouri attorney there representing some adult stores," she noted. "He was very good. He was very concise; he called a spade a spade, that this didn't have to do with taxes, it didn't have to do with limiting hours; it had to do with running the adult industry out of Missouri."
Symm-Gruender noted that the committee chair, Rep. Robert Thane Johnson, hails from the same hometown as Sen. Bartle – Lee's Summit, a small town outside of Kansas City, in the very western part of the state – and that the two legislators seemed not to get along very well, perhaps because Johnson is a supporter of the town's one adult-oriented boutique.
"He [the chairman] was very even-handed in allowing us to speak and giving us each time, but Sen. Bartle only brought two people to testify for him."
"The bottom line of the whole thing is, they didn't vote on it, and the word that we're getting is that it'll die there," Symm-Gruender concluded. "We don't think it will make it out of committee."
R.I.P., SB32? Only time will tell.
