Topless Dancers Protest Church

Churches love their protests. For nearly nine years, the New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw, Ohio, has held demonstrations outside Foxhole North, a local club that features topless dancers. Showing that turnabout is fair play, dancers from the club have now set up their own topless protest outside the church. They have vowed to continue until the church gives up and leaves the club alone.

According to the Coshocton Tribune, at least six bare-breasted women, employees and friends of the Foxhole North club marched outside the New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw.

Club owner Thomas George said that church members have come to his club every weekend for nine years to harass employees and patrons. “They surround people who are trying to come into my club, and try to shame them into not coming,” George explains in a video posted on the Foxhole’s Facebook page. “They call the girls whores, tramps.”

“This is what’s going on in the name of Jesus,” one of the women at the demonstrations points out. “Is anybody else disgusted by this?" The topless protesters have vowed to return every weekend until the church finds a new target.

A solid case can be made that issues surrounding sexuality, whether it be homosexuality, abortion, or topless dancers, do not represent a very significant portion of Jesus' teachings. In the Gospels he is portrayed as much more concerned about the plight of the poor and economic injustice under Roman rule. Nonetheless, many modern fundamentalists barely seem to care about those issues. Instead, they would rather spend all their time shaming people over their private sex lives.

It seems to me that if the church doesn't approve of the club, they're free to admonish their members not to patronize it. But clearly not everyone in town shares their beliefs, and their disapproval doesn't give them the right to run a legitimate business out of town.