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Okay, so Joe wasn’t wild about the counter-religious protest in a Toronto neighbourhood last week. Fair enough, Joe, you raise a number of valid points. However, I think we can all get behind this Ohio protest:

Several Ohio strippers are protesting outside a church whose members want to put their strip club out of business. The bikini-clad dancers are picketing a congregation that has photographed customers’ number plates and asked if their wives know where they are.

I’ve never been to a strip club. I find them more than a little disgusting and, quite frankly, disturbing. I’ve known a few women who worked as strippers, and none of them really liked their jobs much. Maybe in the super-classy places we see glamorized on TV there are women who enjoy taking their clothes off for leering, drunk boors – I’m skeptical. However, I’m not such a prude as to try and inflict my own discomfiture with the concept of stripping on an entire community.

The Fox Hole club’s owner has told the pastor he will call off his protest if the church ceases its demonstrations. But the pastor has refused, saying, “as a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil”.

Ah yes, the loving tolerance that is so prevalent in the Christian community rears its ugly head again. Apparently the territory that the church “shares” with the world extends in a radius at least 14.5 km around the church building.

The point to be made in all of this is that while you absolutely have a right to avoid strip clubs, it’s entirely possible to do so without going on a campaign of intimidation against them. You don’t want it in your community? Don’t go! Is your husband going? Well then the two of you need to have a chat, I suppose. Either that, or get over the fact that some people go to strip clubs (it’s much easier to do so when you realize that some of the strippers are in their 40s).