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Stephen Baldwin Protests Adult Store January 19, 2006

“Actor Stephen Baldwin doesn’t like pornography and says he’ll do anything to shut down a new shop on Route 59. Baldwin stood outside 28 Route 59 last night and photographed workers and their vehicles as they readied the adult entertainment store for business. Baldwin said he planned to stand outside the store every day and photograph the license plates of the store’s patrons in order to track down their identities. He said he would take out a full-page newspaper advertisement once a month to publish those names. ‘I won’t stop until it shuts down,’ he said, standing on the curb in front of the building that once was a car dealership… ‘I don’t want it this close to my house,’ said Baldwin, who lives about a mile away. ‘I’m personally not OK with pornography. I definitely think that it adds to the moral decay or our culture.’ Village officials have said they could not forbid such businesses, only regulate where they open… Clarkstown police responded to the property last night after Baldwin called them about 9:30 p.m. He said the workers were giving him a hard time for taking photographs.” — The Journal News (US)

When did it become legal to persecute the employees of a law-abiding business? Suppose you don’t like the Burger King or the daycare center across the street. You set up a Baldwin-style protest that includes harassment and intimidation. You publish the license plates of people eating hamburgers or shout slogans at parents dropping off their kids. Wouldn’t the police intervene and tell you to leave the place alone? Why should it be any different for an adult bookstore? So long as they both obey the law, the law should not discriminate in its treatment of them. Besides which, if you do want to protest, it’s ignoble to target the employees and not the ownership.

Then again, that’s the sort of dirty tactic typical of Jesus freaks. Certainly it is not property values but rather religious ones that motivate Mr. Baldwin in his crusade against that great scourge of free society, pornography. Evidently he is a born-again Christian — “we’re just a bunch of Christian guys making a video,” he once told some folks on a shoot. Maybe with God on his side Mr. Baldwin will be more successful in his crusade against pornography than he has been in his acting career, which has been a busy but undistinguished one.

In fact, maybe local pornophiles should set up a new protest. Suppose they hate Mr. Baldwin’s crappy movies. Why not stand outside his house, take pictures of him and his license plate, then publish it in the local newspaper with the headline, “No More Bad Movies!” The protesters should steel themselves to fight until Mr. Baldwin retires from the entertainment business — or at least until he leaves the adult entertainment business to itself.


Original Article syndicated via RSS from PervScan

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