IDAHO ANTI-STRIP RALLY - PROTESTERS AND ANTI-PROTESTERS

Idaho Republican lawmaker\nJeff Altus \nSTATELINE, ID - Bruce Preston was there with his family to fight corruption, he said, and to uphold the proposition that sex is made by God for a husband and wife for procreation. Army veteran Al Dahl, who makes some clothing for nude dancers, was there to protest the protest on behalf of free choice. "There" was outside the Stateline Showgirls, where protest against the business drew a crowd that included an Idaho lawmaker who is pushing a bill to tighten restrictions on exotic dancers.

The Idaho Spokesman-Review says the rally began an hour before the Stateline Showgirls opened for business Feb. 26, with a polite but fervent crowd, whether against the club or against the protesters. One protester against the club, Bethany Darrow with the youth group Hayden Lake Friends, said nude dancing can cause societal breakdown. "Everybody should have the right to do what they want," she told the paper, "but when it hurts other people, it's wrong."

"This is America," Dahl said, an American flag wrapped around his shoulders, the Spokesman says. "We have freedom of choice. Those girls are in there making a living."

He also told the paper the Aryan Nations sent protesters to Stateline Showgirls some month's back and people should worry when "churchgoers take up the same cause as the white supremacists."

Idaho Republican lawmaker Jeff Altus plans to introduce a bill to restrict nude dance clubs severely around the state. He appeared at the rally holding a petition with two thousand signatures, calling for closing down Stateline Showgirls. He says opponents act out of love and not hate for the dancers and believe they should be "saved from the downward spiral that begins with easy money and can lead to alcohol and drug abuse and sexually transmitted disease," the Spokesman says.

"This isn't San Francisco, folks," Altus told the rally. "This is still Idaho. We want to keep it a good place to raise a family." Other rally speakers said tighter rules in neighboring Spokane County, Washington might drive more strip clubs to Stateline, where Stateline Showgirls is the only such club in "the small border community with a long history of racy nightclubs," as the Spokesman describes it.

Protesters wanted background checks on owners and workers at Stateline Showgirls and other nude dancing clubs, the paper says, as well as requirements for dancers to wear at least G-strings and pasties instead of dancing all nude, plus limits on how close dancers can be to patrons. Stateline Showgirls has a rule barring lap dancing but allowing the dancers as close as six inches from customers, the paper continues.

Another Stateline Showgirls protester was Kimberly Blake, an anti-porn crusader who was once an exotic dancer herself, in Spokane, Washington. "I witnessed prostitution," she told the rally. "I bought, used and sold marijuana. Everyone did."

But while Blake talked about crime and blight which she says go hand in hand with nude dancing, Stateline Showgirls said four new businesses opened since the club opened fourteen months ago, and property values haven't gone down. The club also says it would terminate any dancers involved in drugs.