Sex shops sprout on the prairie

By Stephanie Simon
Los Angeles Times

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Two women in prim business suits gawk at a shelf of raunchy gag gifts, giggling. A truck driver searches thousands of DVDs for a pornographic movie. Near the Love Sling of Ecstasy, a wife confers with her husband by cellphone as she studies a tidy display of vibrators, hundreds of them, in every size, shape and color.

Adult superstores such as this are popping up all over rural America, brightly lit, pointedly clean, as well-organized and well-stocked as Wal-Mart.

Remote freeway offramps are now X-rated in Quaker City, Ohio (pop. 563), and Nelson, Mo. (pop. 212), in Montrose, Ill., and Perry, Mich. The Lion's Den chain operates 29 stores in the Midwest, including this one off Exit 272, near the cows and hay bales of Dickinson County.

In these small towns, the arrival of big, brash porn shops has been unexpected — and divisive.

Debates about morality, obscenity and privacy have played out at church suppers and planning commission meetings — and sometimes in court.

John Haltom, who owns the Dr. John's Lingerie chain, recently spent time behind bars in Nebraska and Utah for promoting obscenity and selling pornography to minors. He and other adult-store owners also have taken the offensive, suing city officials for trying to force them out of business or state lawmakers for censoring their billboards.

Here in central Kansas, the Lion's Den faces criminal obscenity charges; a judge will hear the final pretrial arguments today. The store, meanwhile, has filed a federal lawsuit against Dickinson County for trying to restrict where and when it can sell sex-themed merchandise. That case will be heard in January.

Many locals find themselves deeply conflicted. A hairdresser says adult stores are wicked, then admits she might like to try a few products to spice up her relationship. A sales representative says he supports free enterprise, but he hates to see his town collecting sales tax on obscenity.

"I haven't worked it all out yet," said Amber Brook, a young waitress. "I grew up in a Christian home, and I believe there's a right and a wrong. But I don't feel that gives me the right to impose my values on others."

The discord in Abilene was set off last fall when the Lion's Den opened a superstore in a former Stuckey's restaurant off I-70, one exit west of the town of 6,500.
 
Lion's Den executives would not comment on why they picked the location. But several adult-store managers said stores on rural offramps thrive not because there's an unusually heavy demand for pornography in the heartland, but because the market has not been well-served.

"There's no competition within 40 miles of me," said Jeannie Smith, who manages a Lion's Den in Newton, Iowa. "We're doing great."

Rural locations also appeal because land and buildings tend to be cheap. There are few neighbors to complain about late-night hours. Potential customers stream by on the interstate, including long-haul truck drivers who will stop anywhere that's open at 3 a.m., just to keep themselves awake.

And, perhaps most important, out-of-the-way counties have few, if any, laws to restrict sexually oriented businesses.

"These rural communities never thought they'd have to deal with what they perceived to be a big-city problem. So they were caught, as we say, with their ordinances down," said Scott Bergthold, a Tennessee lawyer who has built a career out of helping towns fight adult businesses.

Abilene markets itself as an all-American town, the home of former President Eisenhower, Russell Stover chocolates and the greyhound racing dog Hall of Fame.

The Lion's Den stood out as flagrantly provocative, with its garish billboards, its ads on country radio and its huge stock of plastic blow-up dolls and battery-powered sex partners.

"There's no end to the depravity," said Phillip Cosby, a local activist who hopes to drive the store out of Dickinson County.

Teaming up with pastors, Cosby organized a 100-day, round-the-clock vigil in the Lion's Den parking lot. The protesters took down the license numbers of truck drivers who went into the store and reported them to their companies. They raised nearly $5,000 in a single day to pay for a billboard declaring "Pornography Destroys Families."

Then they circulated a petition calling for an investigation into the Lion's Den business practices.

Kansas law requires counties to respond to such petitions by convening a grand jury. In April, the Lion's Den was indicted on 29 counts of promoting obscenity.

If the case goes to trial, a jury will decide which products fit the state's definition of obscene.

Lion's Den executives would not comment on the case. But in a 60-page brief, the company's attorneys argued that the Kansas obscenity law is unconstitutional because it violates the privacy of Kansans, "who have a right to engage in lawful intimate acts free from state interference."

The sexual devices on display "provoke the moral condemnation of at least a vocal minority of citizens," the attorneys said. "But not all moral sentiments are entitled to force of law."