They Write Letters! It’s a shame they can’t think.
So, opposition to the Blue Boutique’s new location is rapidly becoming the gift the just keeps giving - unfortunately they’re giving to comics, cynics and satirists.
Today’s Trib has a modern classic letter to the editor by Lynn F. Price of Salt Lake City:
. . . the concern is not just that teenagers will access the “adult” material.Â
The greater concern is that the adults who are drawn to those sexual products may find it too easy to then just go across the street to Sugar House Park, endangering the safety of children. Sugar House Park is a family park and serves as an extension of Highland High School and soccer tournaments, cross-country meets and community fireworks displays.
The park is frequently full of young people with and without adult supervision. Whether the portion of a store’s inventory is 15 percent or 100 percent, it is not appropriate to have it in a family neighborhood next to a family park, ice cream store and neighborhood school . . .
Where to begin!?
I guess it’s important to begin with the central question: Who and what endangers children and young people?
If you’re curious, most cases of sexual abuse and exploitation of children are commited by someone close to the family. And it’s not a mere majority - it’s overwhelming. People who target children for sexual crimes have a well-documented history of putting themselves into respectable positions - scout leader springs to mind - which allow them access to children. It’s not impossible that someone might go to the Blue Boutique and then proceed across 2100 South to take advantage of a child, it is unlikely. According to DOJ statistics, 7% of child sexual assaults are committed by strangers. For the math challenged among us, that means 93% are committed by family members (34.2%) or acquaintances (58.7%).Â
I realize that if your child is one of 7%, those numbers aren’t even cold comfort. But as a matter of policy, children and young persons are in far greater danger from acquaintances of your family than some random stranger who just bought massage oil at the Blue Boutique.
Lynn’s letter is a textbook example of the way people respond in a moral panic.  The statistics don’t in fact bear out her claims or support her fears.  Like the “stranger danger” nonsense from a few years back (at the time, almost 97% of kidnappings were committed by family or friends of the victim), fears about children being sexually victimized by strangers - via the internet or some trenchcoated stranger at the park - are grotesquely exaggerated.
To put it another way, while Lynn Price and people like her may experience very real fear, their fear is unrealistic.Â
November 30th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
The store has already been in the neighborhood for 20 years. It’s safe to say - gasp - that people in the neighborhood shop there.
These people need to take a drive to Evanston or Wendover and walk into a real SOB and compare and contrast. There is a huge difference.
It’s safe to say some boys from the school will try to sneek into the adult room for a thrill as they have been doing for 20 yrs. But as the Trib’s editorial points out the real concern parents should have is not a store selling bras, teddies and some dildos it’s the vast amount of porn that can accessed on the new iPhone they just purchased their child.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
As thebirdman.org has always maintained, fucking is a family value. All of us started with some slap and tickle, and perhaps a twinkle.
What I find most amusing is that the whole Valley is a product of multiple slap and tickle with more than one partner. Bunch heathen whores they were back then!!
Now everyone is so much better. Was Joe a pedophile?
Temptation is Gods way of telling you to get busy baby.
Long Live the STORE!! Can’t wait to spend money there when I visit!!
December 1st, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I remember a day when Sugarhouse park was an open air market for illegal drugs, teeming with buyers and sellers. It got so big, the police staged a spectacular raid. Cecil B. DeMille would have been proud.