Religious nut tries to use bible to shut down local tattoo parlors.

[carrowsboy]

"Council holds off on inking tattoo parlor regulation"

COLONIAL HEIGHTS — City Council tabled a decision last night about whether or not to look into local regulation of tattoo parlors.

After a citizen expressed his concern over the parlors in the neighborhoods of churches and schools at a previous meeting, Mayor John T. Wood asked City Attorney Chip Fisher to find out what legal options Colonial Heights would have to enforce such regulations. On Tuesday, Fisher made it clear that there was little the city could do.

Bob Moore, who described himself as a born-again Christian, once again addressed the council and named religious reasons as his motive for wanting to ban the ink parlors. The last time he brought a Bible and quoted from the Old Testament, Leviticus 19:28: “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.”

Last night, he showed a more personally rooted dislike for tattooing.

“This tattoo thing ticks me off,” he told council.

“You can walk by one of those parlors on a Sunday and see these people hanging out on the front porch of their business. And I just hate to see these young girls run around town with their tattoos.” Moore even suggested to raise taxes for tattoo parlors as a means to drive them out of the city.

“Maybe we should enforce a $50,000 sales tax for these people,” he said. “The next we know they’ll be near our schools. We need to do something about them.”

But this would be far from easy, as Fisher pointed out.

“The state already enforces heavy regulations on tattoo parlors,” he said. “The book of regulations specifically for these businesses is about 20 pages long, and it includes the issuing and renewal of licenses, licensing for individual tattoo artists and sanitary regulations.”

Fisher concluded that a tattoo parlor is “a perfectly legitimate business.”

Fisher said that although the state agencies enforce regulation, there is a loophole for localities to have their own say — at least in regard to business zoning. While localities have no authority to issue licenses, some in the state have attempted regulation by forbidding tattoo parlors to open, based on zoning restrictions. And since Colonial Heights is about to modify its zoning ordinance, clauses that limit possibilities for tattoo parlors could be included.

This would put an extra burden on the city, Fisher said.

“The planning director would have to develop some type of criteria, and the council would have to issue a mandate for every single business application,” he said.

“This would put us in the position of differentiating between businesses like barber shops, beauty parlors and tattoo parlors,” Wood concluded. Councilman C. Scott Davis said this would be a difficult move.

“If we denied to issue business permits to tattoo parlors, we would have to give a very good reason for doing so,” he said.

Fisher agreed. “You can’t do this for moral reasons. It has to be a legally valid reason, for example, if a business causes too much traffic in a certain area.” Fisher also said he was concerned that the city could decide to take such step. “It would definitely concern me because the state regulates many businesses, and we would have to explain why we would single one out for special treatment,” he said.

Wood proposed the idea that council members would think over such action and formally discuss it in the next council meeting.

Councilman Milton Freeland disagreed.

“I don’t want to consider this,” he said. “We are jumping the gun here. Someone is about to get an unfair treatment. The customers at tattoo parlors are not just a bunch of bikers on Harleys. It’s the sons and daughters of the city of Colonial Heights we are talking about. My own daughter got her tattoo. These parlors are good businesses who pay business taxes and real estate taxes. This is the 21st century.”

Councilwoman Betsy Luck said the discussion at least would be beneficial for the citizens.

“Most people believe that the city has authority over everything, but that is not the case,” she said. “We need to let the public know that this is not for us to decide.”

Wood agreed. “We don’t have the authority to say that we’ve got enough banks or drug stores. It’s the same with tattoo parlors.”

In spite of opposition by Freeland, council members decided to give the matter some thought and discuss it again in the next meeting.

Stephanie Connelly is a local tattoo parlor owner who came to last night’s council meeting after she read about the city’s plans to look into regulations. Connelly planned to tell her side of the story, but decided to remain quiet.

“I was a bit nervous,” she admitted. Connelly’s father-in-law opened the first tattoo parlor in Petersburg more than 80 years ago. Recently, she moved her store to a building at 415 Boulevard.

“I don’t understand why some people have problems with us,” she said. “We pay our taxes. We don’t drink. We don’t do drugs. We don’t smoke.” She also said that Moore took the Leviticus quote out of context. “It also says that we must not eat pork and must not cut our hair. What’s next, are we going to close barber shops and barbecue restaurants?”

But after hearing council’s discussion, Connelly said she was relieved. “I feel better now,” she said. “I really believed that they were going to take this to the General Assembly.”


http://www.progress-index.com/articles/2008/10/15/news/pi_progindex.20081015.a.pg6.pi1015chcoun_s1.2016570_top4.txt

[notadmblnd]

1. what does that even mean? "Do not cut your bodies for the dead?"

[petronius]

3. Perhaps self-inflicted injuries as a form of grieving?

Shedding your own blood as a sacrifice to honor the dead, or intercede for them?

:shrug:

[notadmblnd]

4. Like those self flagellating priests fomr Opus Dei?

ok, got it. Thanks.

[TlalocW]

2. If only a council member had replied to his Bible passage reading with

My religion makes me get impatient with people forcing their religion down other people's throats. There, we've both wasted each others' time. Next issue.

TlalocW