FW: [hbe-l] Blind customers want to touch club lapdancers

[Myron Moskovitz]

This arose in U.K. I wonder how the Americans With Disabilities Act would
apply here.

mm

   The Telegraph [London]
   ISSUE 1950 Tuesday 26 September 2000

   Blind customers want to touch club lapdancers
   By David Sapsted

   A LAPDANCING club has applied to the local council for a variance to
   its licence to allow blind patrons to touch performers.

   The Pussycats club in Hove, East Sussex, complained that the strict no
   touching clause in its current licence discriminates against the
   blind. Kenneth McGrath, director of the club, took up the issue with
   Brighton and Hove council after two blind men visited Pussycats with a
   stag party of sighted friends.

   They wanted to touch the girls, explaining that, if they could, it
   would give them a better idea of what the exotic dancers looked like.
   The club's licence forbids any physical contact between dancers and
   guests except when customers feel the need to place banknotes in the
   dancer's garters.

   Mr McGrath said: "Both men said they very much enjoyed the dances and
   sensed highly the proximity of the dancers and, in particular, enjoyed
   the smell of their perfume. Given their disability, they felt
   controlled touching ought to be permitted for registered blind persons
   only and with the dancer's consent."

   Mr McGrath said that 11 of the 15 dancers had said they would not
   object to being touched. "They said that touching should be voluntary
   and restricted to the breasts and only when the dancer is wearing a
   bra and not topless. The dancer would retain full control, taking one
   hand of the blind customer and placing it on her breasts while dancing
   for an agreed time."

   A council spokesman said: "We would consider any application for a
   variance of the lapdancing licence once we receive it."


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