Keeping a strip-club, a nude-dance bar, or a dirty movie den somewhere else than on Main Street requires some planning and legal help. The Supreme Court says cities cannot ban them but they can control their operations.  Bruce Hausknecht is judicial analyst at Focus of the Family Action.

“As in all First Amendment issues, a city or municipality can reasonably regulate the time, place and manner of such speech.” 

Phillip Cosby has done it in Abilene, Kansas where he took on porn shops and the billboard industry out on the interstate.

“There’s a whole laundry list of things you can do. You can even move them geographically from one location to another.

And Cosby says the courts will likely protect that zoning decision.

“They don’t care if it’s in the middle of a swamp or a wheat field; you don’t have to give them Main Street.”

But the town cannot make it an outright ban. Dan Weiss is with Focus on the Family Action.

“If you’re setting your regulations or your zoning ordinances so strict that there’s no possible way for them to be established, then you’re violating the law.

The other thing small towns should not do, according to Weiss, is delay putting laws in place.

“These types of businesses target these small communities because of the lack of any types of ordinances.” 

And the last thing not to do is to be intimidated.  Many small towns have pulled away from regulating the sex shops and shows because of threats of a suit from the porn peddlers.  But the law is on the community’s side.