We love Dick

Blumenthal!

(The photo above shows the sign at the corner of my front yard. It serves as a message board for the neighborhood)

A newspaper photographer came out Saturday to take a pic of the sign in my yard for an upcoming story. Other than the big NO VIP and email address, there is currently no message. I joked with my husband that I should change the message on our sign to read “We love Dick …Blumenthal!” It would be both humorous (well, I think so) and true.

I am very grateful to the Attorney General for his support and for seeing that this situation is likely to become a problem for other communities if VIP is allowed to disregard a town’s sexually oriented business ordinances.

Unless or until a situation is effecting one personally, people often don’t see the point of getting involved in things like this. I am guilty of this myself. When Kurt Kemmling began his efforts to get the Infra-Red strip club closed, of course I thought it was a good idea for the town to do it, but I saw no reason to get involved. That was all the way on the other side of town! Kurt, (without the benefit of the many supportive neighbors I am lucky to have) along with the town council, kept up the fight, while Infra-red (new owner would have re-named it Gold Diggers) and their lawyer (Dan Silver, who else?) sued Berlin. The claim–Berlin’s SOB ordinance was unconstitutional.

After taking nearly a year to get through the courts, in January, a federal judge upheld Berlin’s SOB ordinance. Now I couldn’t be more grateful to Kurt for standing up for his neighborhood, as this decision could really be important to my current situation. Now, I wish I had lent Kurt’s battle more support, but of course, I didn’t know it would ever effect me.

I truly hope that the town of Berlin prevails in the VIP lawsuit, and if they do, I will have Kurt to thank in part for that. I hope that these efforts will some day help other communities to protect their neighborhoods.