A 67-year-old guy is arrested by the FBI for illegally using marijuana, cocaine, and prescription painkillers with a stripper over many months. In addition to purchasing lap dances and sex with her at a strip club, he had a sexual relationship with her outside lasting many months.
Nothing unusual about this. A lot of victimless crimes, but crimes nevertheless.
It turns out that the guy is a longtime federal judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan.
That’s certainly uncommon—most people aren’t federal judges—but judges are human, subject to the same impulses and narcissistic sense of invulnerability as the rest of us.
So here’s where it gets interesting:
Before his arrest, the judge (Jack Camp) recently ruled on a case involving a Georgia county’s regulating—get this—strip clubs and alcohol. Whitfield County had adopted an ordinance prohibiting clubs from selling alcohol if they featured nudity; prohibiting strippers from touching customers (i.e., no lap dances); and other arbitrary limitations designed to restrict what adults could do in the private space.
Some local people challenged the ordinance, and when the county offered no justification for its discriminatory laws, the judge simply accepted the county’s assertion—strip clubs cause crime—and dismissed the lawsuit.
I guess of all people, this guy should know, eh?
Wait, there’s a little kicker: while coverage of the case breathlessly detailed the drugs (Roxicodone), the sex (fueled by drug buys), and even the pistol Judge Camp protectively took to the drug buys (a .380-caliber Sig Sauer with a full magazine), no one—from Fox News to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to anyone else—mentioned the recent strip club case.
And so they kept it a trivial, titillating story.
Instead of reporting the real story: the county government took away every adult’s right to purchase private entertainment. The government offered no justification, claiming that the Constitution doesn’t apply to adult entertainment.
A corrupt judge supported the government’s power grab, depriving people of their rights. Then it turns out the judge was a customer of the very industry, illegally exercising the rights he had helped steal from local people.
And people continue to be so incoherent about sexuality that they still don’t understand: when you let the government bully people about something you don’t care about, it’s only a matter of time before it bullies people about something you do care about.
The scorecard:
Whitfield county government succeeds in treating local adults like children, trampling the Constitution;
The FBI gets their man—and protects America from one more 67-year-old guy cheating on his wife;
Judge-for-life Jack Camp turns out to be more interested in wild times than anyone thought—and more hypocritical than anyone dreamed;
The news media leer at an old man paying a drugged-up young whore to sleep with him, rather than exposing another unconstitutional victory in the War On Sex;
America scores one more pathetic little trophy in its continued obsession to criminalize lust. And its sexual schizophrenia deepens, as public policy becomes increasingly conservative and shame-based at the same time that private bedroom behavior becomes increasingly experimental and non-traditional.