ASSOCIATION ORGANIZES PICKET OF REGINA'S

A group plans to protest the opening Friday night of Regina's House of Dolls by carrying signs outside the business that read "no strippers."

Donna Miller, president of the Cape County American Family Association, conducted a meeting Monday at Shoney's to discuss ways to shut down the strip club.

The organization is hopeful that peaceful protests and new city laws will accomplish the task.

Miller said Councilman Melvin Gateley, who voted against granting the nightclub a liquor license, has pledged to help the group get strict public nudity laws in the Cape Girardeau.

Miller added that current obscenity laws aren't being adequately enforced.

"We care about the detrimental affect these strippers' body movements will have on the people who watch them," she said.

Miller said residents likely will visit the club out of curiosity. "And the men and women who walk in there will have their sex drives shoot right up," she said. "Then they will go back again and again."

She predicted an increase in rape and child molestation will accompany the club's operations.

The group Monday decided a picket would cut down on Regina's business, because customers don't like to cross picket lines or have their faces seen.

They plan to park at The Hut Company, 821 Progress, and then walk over to the club on Enterprise Street. A specific time for the march wasn't decided.

Miller wouldn't estimate how many protesters would show up.

"I don't know or care how many people will be there," she said. "I'm not going to call anyone else. This is it. I know I'll be there."

Salvation Army Capt. Elmer Trapp said the local ministerial alliance could help get anti-nudity laws passed in Cape Girardeau by encouraging church members to sign petitions.

Jim Geyser of Sikeston attended Monday's meeting after he learned of the AFA meeting through a newspaper advertisement. He said he is concerned because his family is planning to move to Cape Girardeau.

Geyser said Regina's opening wouldn't keep his family in Sikeston, but he wanted to help shut the business down.

Wanda Hamilton, whose husband pastors Antioch Baptist Church, agreed.

"This business will just degrade the community that much more," she said. "If the church people got behind this effort, they wouldn't have been able to have this meeting at Shoney's. It wouldn't hold everybody."

David Rosener, the lawyer who represents Regina's House of Dolls, couldn't be reached Monday night to comment on the meeting and the planned picket.