Truckers' Pictures Taken When They Buy Porn

The findings I stated are not my opinion. They are public record. When we presented the lack of enforcement by both police and local government at various commissioner meetings and other public gatherings we also presented the public record. The public record findings were considered so serious the Federal Department of Justice in 2008 moved forward to prosecute a mandamus order (i.e. court order to enforce the law) against the local government and law enforcement. The only thing that stopped it was a direct order from President Obama in January, 2009 who ordered all federal cases pending against pornography be dropped.

We did far more than slow the traffic at the Lion’s Den, we stopped over 90 percent. For example, The Lion’s Den stated in the Tribune in July, 2005, they expected 1,400 trucks per week (200 per day). The average semi-truck traffic during our protest was only 6 trucks per week. In July, 2006, The Lion’s Den tried to stop our protest by court order claiming loss profit and stated their loss figures. They lost that case, of course. From Lion’s Den own figures filed in their court papers we can accurately say they lost over $4 million in sales during our protest.

If you claim the majority of residents opposed the protesters, you must dwell in a very small crowd. I can show you by comparison.

Three residents gathered over 20,000 names on a petition in just 4 days. The petition was presented to the County Commissioners BEFORE the Lion’s Den opened (public record). A few months after the Lion’s Den opened, supporters of the Lion’s Den attempted to gather names on a petition supporting the Lion’s Den. I recall they made quite an effort. They never turned it in. I’m told from a source (who claimed he had signed the petition) that they got just over 100 names. They were too embarrassed to turn it in. At least there is no public record of it.

Jackson County residents staged a protest against the Lion’s Den 24/7 for 5 years. During that time we had over a dozen times pro porn proponents on our website http://www.war-line.net saying they too would come out and counter demonstrate against us and in favor of the Lion’s Den. Not a single time did any of these demonstrators appear. One customer in opposition to our protest claimed he would get at least 100 people and perhaps 200 people to come out and counter protest. The total number to show up was ONE (plus the man who called for the counter protest). They held up a couple of signs across the street for about 15 minutes and left. That is the full measure of active support the Lion’s Den got from Jackson County residents in 5 years.

At every commissioners’ meeting dealing with the issue of the Lion’s Den, opponents packed the chambers. While a number of these opponents were protesters, more than half were other residents opposed to the Lion’s Den. The Lion’s Den got a total of ONE resident to show support at commissioners meetings (July 2005) and he did that only once. During the last few years even the employees didn’t bother to show up. Residents supporting the protesters always packed the court chambers at the various court hearings. NO resident support EVER showed up to support the Lion’s Den in court. At the last “summary judgment” hearing where the judge would make the final ruling about the Lion’s Den NO employees even came to support. The only person supporting the Lion’s Den was their paid attorney. Very sad showing for the “big majority” of residents you claim that support porn.

The residents raised $18,000 to pay legal fees plus much more to handle the expenses of the protest. There was also an attempt to set up a fund for supporters of the Lion’s Den but it never transpired.

The only avenues for those who support porn are on forums such as this one. This way they can say anything, not have to back it up, not invest money and remain anonymous. It seems to us that if there was an actual majority of people who opposed the protesters there would be a much better showing than this in the public rather than on forum pages.

The real fact is in every community where porn is an issue, surveys clearly show 85 percent are against the sexually oriented business and only 15 percent support it. The several examples I pointed out support the same percentage would apply to Jackson County.

You point out the Lion’s Den has appealed. You seem to claim that as a victory and confident they will win. Actually the opposite is true. The reason the judge ruled in all counts against the Lion’s Den is the upper courts have already ruled on the same issues. The Indiana Superior Court judge had no choice but to rule against the Lion’s Den because the VERY SAME appeals courts and federal courts that the Lion’s Den can appeal have already ruled and the judge had to rule likewise or be unconstitutional. The Lion’s Den has a slim to none chance according to our constitutional attorney.

Oh, by the way, I am a very happy man. I have a beautiful wife to whom I’ve been married 35 years and two beautiful daughters who are grown and making wonderful contributions in their lives for other people.

On the other hand, during the 5 years we protested we counseled thousands of people who came for porn. Every one of them we counseled was very unhappy, but a huge majority left with a new positive outlook on life without porn. Many of them have come back to tell us they are much happier and now have great sex lives. Many came back to testify they discovered after talking with us porn was destroying their relationships and sex lives. They are much happier now. A portion of the $18,000 we raised was from former porn addicts who came back to thank us. I don’t believe any people who discovered porn after the Lion’s Den arrived here contributed to support the Lion’s Den in any way to show their gratitude. Happy people always show gratitude. Unhappy people never do.

Look on our website http://www.war-line.net on our GOTCHA page and you can see Lion’s Den customers illegal behavior. Any behavior therapist will tell you such illegal behavior is done by people unhappy in their lives. That’s where the real problem is whenever a sex business operates in a residential neighborhood.

Have a happy day.

Actually we did have federal Department of Justice involved, at least for a little while.
President Bush had issued a directive to the Department of Justice that each federal district (there are 9) must prosecute at least 2 cases against pornography. DOJ people inquired and one even visited our protest. We cooperated of course providing everything they requested.They finally agreed they would place our case on their 4th District docket for prosecution against the local government for a “writ of mandamus” (I.E. order the local government ot enforce the ordinances or face federal prosecution). This was in 2008.
The process apparently is detailed and was taking several months. This was not unexpected in first amendment cases. We had some expection our case would be heard in February or March in 2009.
The national election of 2008 caused a change in administration. In January President Obama reversed the Bush executive order and in a new executive order had all cases pending against pornographers to be immediatley dropped from case files. We have no idea why our new president would do this. We got no response from Department of Justice. It just disappeared.
As you can see, government, be it local, state or federal, was not our friend. This just added to our cause we had to take measures ourselves to fignt the Lion’s Den and local government. We continued to protest locally and finally won in court after 5 years of battle.
By the way, we personally paid for the attorney who won our summary judgment. The county refused. We thus raised money for the county commissioners to enforce their oun ordinance that by law they were soley responsible to enforce. We, the residents paid over $18,000 in personal funds to the special constitutional attorney who handled our case. Ironically, while it was the residents who paid his bill, the attorney by law represented the Jackson County Commissioners who refused to pay him or make any serious attempt to enforce the law.

Jackson County is a rural agricultural county and no urban cities. The largest “city” is Seymour (about 8,000) and the county seat Brownstown (about 3,000). Virually all other communities are under 1,000 population, the vast majority under 500 people. Uniontown has about 50 people scaterred in about 20 homes.
Rural counties, as a rule, do not have serious crime stats as urban centers. Thus we have only two law enforcement stations to serve all of Jackson County. Seymour has a small Indiana State Police station in Seymour and Brownstown has a County Sheriff station. That’s about it.
These law enforcement centers are about 20 miles away from Uniontown on opposite sides of the county. That’s not the worst part, however. These law enforcement locations are thinly manned. For example, most nights only one deputy sheriff officer is on duty for the entire county. Indiana State Police have a few more on night duty but they patrol mainly north Jackson County. The average police response time to Uniontown is 45 minutes if they show up at all. It runs 50-50 most times. For example, when a Lion’s Den customer attacked some residents in Uniontown one night, we were told the officer would not respond because he was taking a drunk driver back to Brownstown to be put in jail.
Indiana pays for police totally by property taxes. State regulations call for a mininum of $200,000 property tax per year tax revenue to man even a small local police station. To pay for this mininum requirement each home/business in Uniontown would have to pay an additional $1,000 PER MONTH to operate a two man police station plus dispatcher and part time officer, (the mininum allowed). We thus have to depend upon either State Police or County Sheriff for whatever law enforcement we may need. Up until the Lion’s Den opened, we rarely needed law enforcement.
Also, typical of small police forces, corruption runs rampant. During our protest 17 protesters were arrested at our protest site. Their crime was protesting! Every protester was acquitted in court. On the other hand the protesters were attacked hundreds of times by Lion’s Den customers. We had pictures of the attacker, pictures of the attack, license plate number and full description. Despite all this information the local law enforcement refused to arrest a single attacker. One man who attacked us actually turned himself in to State police after he attacked one of our people TWICE. Still the law enforcement refused to arrest him. They told him to come down and apologize to the person he twice attacked! Local police were not the least interested in protecting our first amendment rights. Many residents believe (with some justification) local officials were paid off by the Lion’s Den. We have no proof of that but their lack of enforcemnt of attackes on residents and the obvious illegal behavior of Lion’s Den customers that you see on http://www.war-line.net give a strong clue where their loyalty was applied. If the Lion’s Den had been allowed to continue our law enforcment would not have done anything for what little they could do anyway. This is not unusual in rural communities in any state.
Like most rural communities across America who face this situation, we take care of ourselves. Basically what we were doing on our protest was a 24/7 Neighborhood Blockwatch group.

Actually, it’s within any citizen’s right to work to stop any business that is operating illegally. The Lion’s Den was in violation of three constitutionally correct ordinances in Jackson County. The details of that ordinance on on my August 25 comments on this forum.
We agree with you every business has a reasonable right to operate. Also every business must comply to reasonable laws for the protection of the community. For example, you probably would not be allowed to open a punk rock nightclub bar in the middle of a quiet family neighborhood. The reasons are obvious. Multiply those obvious reasons by 100 and you get what we faced in Uniontown.
Uniontown is a residential community of just 50 people. We have no police. The Lion’s Den purchased 9 acres of property and lied to local government they were opening a grocery/store/truck stop. This was in clear violation of the county’s adult business ordinance but they ignored that and decided to bully the small rural local government.
They boasted in the local newspaper they would park 200 trucks PER NIGHT. That’s 1,400 trucks per week watching porn in a little town of 50 people with no police. That’s pretty overwhelming! Even Mayberry had Andy and Barney. You should also know that at the same time the Lion’s Den was being constructed, a local 10 year old girl was abducted, raped and murdered. It broke the hearts of all the people in our little community. In a town of 50 people, every neighbor, every child is “family.”
The man they captured was convicted and now serving a life sentence. Court testimomy showed porn played a major part in this horrible crime.
The Uniontown Lion’s Den was constructed totally to attract truckers off I-65, the major north/south Interstate from Chicago to Florida. Tens of thousands drive by us every day.
Using our method of protest we cut off 90 percent of their business. They projected 1,400 trucks per week. Our protest lowered that customer count to just average of 6 trucks per week. Three times we intefered with out of state customers attacking children:on four occassions we stopped pimps setting up prostitutes at the Lion’s Den and stopped drug activity there more times than we can count.
If we had not banded together and kept watch, several more horrible crimes would have happened in Uniontown since there is no police force here. The drug and prostitute activity would have been overwhelming.
Look at the pictures on our war-line.net website and see the typical behavior they did here. All this in presence of families and children in our little town. Would you want this behavior by thousands of out of area customers next door to you and your children? Add to this no police in the area to respond to your emergency and a local government too cowardly to enforce the law, and you can see our problem. We understand you may consider our pictures inappropiate for children on our website. We also ask for understanding that our children had to see this actual behavior 24/7 every day for 1,827 days. Our families and children did not enjoy the “blue bar” censoring you got on our website. We endured this and far worse acts that we never posted.
What we did was a “proactive” protest. We could have passively held signs, but Christians have done this for 40 years with no success. We took pictures and posted them on our website.to expose their crime and/or sin (see Ephesians 5: 11-15). Our pictures documented their illegal acts and discouraged most others from coming in. We never judged the customers. In fact we witnessed to thousands, gave out 2,000 Bibles and hundreds of Lion’s Den customers (and some employees) accepted Christ right here in front of a porn store.
We consider that our major victory in Uniontown. Closing the sex business was simply God’s promise if we stayed faithful. Since we had no police force, we had to take measures to protect ourselves and our children.