Tattoo parlor sign in Eton draws cry of 'indecency'

By Victor Miller
Dalton Daily Citizen

July 09, 2008 09:14 am

— For Tracy Ballew, the picture is clear. The sign is “indecent and immoral.”
For city of Eton officials, things are a little more complicated.
“It seemed to fall more within the parameters of First Amendment speech protection than the issue of it failing local community standards insofar as being outright pornography,” said city attorney Terry Miller.
In question is a sign advertising for Lunatics Tattoo off U.S. Highway 411 south of the intersection with Ga. Highway 286. The artist’s rendering features a woman looking over her shoulder.
“As a citizen I have a right to drive up and down the road and not see a naked lady on the side,” said Ballew, a resident of Eton. “If she had clothes on I wouldn’t have any problems with it.”
But Ballew acknowledges that after she filed a written complaint with the city, someone went back to the sign and added what she calls a “G-string” to the area of the woman’s back side, which Ballew said was previously fully exposed, “but it didn’t go far enough.” The business was closed Tuesday afternoon.
Ballew cited language in the city’s sign ordinance to support her view that the sign should be not allowed by city officials. The ordinance reads, “No sign shall be erected which contains statements, words or pictures of an obscene, indecent or immoral character that will offend public morals or decency.”
“I think it’s indecent and immoral for them to even allow that,” she said. “When I made the complaint about it they told me (in a letter from the city clerk) it was my opinion that it was indecent and immoral.”
Ballew said as a school bus driver for Murray County Schools she would often have “70 children, if not more” on her bus as it made its way past the sign.
“I’m a Christian and I go to church,” she said. “And there’s a lot of people in this town that do go to church and we have a right just as much as they do — I don’t have anything against that business — but when they put it on the outside of the street, that’s when it becomes my business. When me and my family have to drive by that to see that sign, that to me is against my rights as a citizen of this town.”
Miller said the sign was discussed during a meeting of the City Council in June following the written complaint. He said Police Chief Brent Hooper had seen the sign, but he had not.
“It was the only complaint of the sign that they had seen or heard, and you essentially have the sign that does not reveal in a pornographic way the human body,” Miller said. “It might be somewhat suggestive ... but it seemed to fall more within the parameters of First Amendment speech protection than the issue of it failing local community standards insofar as being outright pornography. Now that was the description in the report that the chief brought to us at the time. My memory is the clerk and maybe another council person were familiar with the content of the sign.”
Miller said typically when there is what would be considered a “pornographic sign or something demonstrative in a community, it’s been my experience that you get many calls. And that particular night in June there did not seem to be a reason for me to go and actually inspect the sign for legal purposes just based upon the chief’s report and the reports of others who were familiar with it.
“Now that isn’t to say that the sign has some sort of seal of approval by the city, but we do have the parameters of the First Amendment in terms of commercial speech and we have to be cognizant of that as well and it seemed like that’s where the matter was left that night. ...
“Had the chief and those present expressed alarm about it, if it was way out of line with community standards in terms of First Amendment case law, I would have been happy to go look at it but that has not happened yet.”
“There are no uncovered — what we would consider — pornographic revelations or body parts, but it probably would be by anyone’s standards a suggestive way to dress and appear,” Miller said, “and that’s the way the sign was described to me. And with that I said when you get into regulating First Amendment commercial speech you really have a threshold that goes beyond that. Based upon the verbal description of the depiction of the sign, my indication to the city that night was that it did not sound as if it would strictly meet a threshold where the city could regulate it or take it down without running the risk of violating someone’s First Amendment rights.”
In an e-mail to Ballew, City Clerk Kim Hall invited Ballew to place her name on the July 16 City Council meeting agenda to discuss the matter further with city officials.
“If we need to take a look at it, there’s no unwillingness to do it,” Miller said “We will be glad to take a look and see if we’re getting it right or not.”
Asked about Ballew’s contention that the sign is indecent and immoral and thus violates the city’s ordinance, Miller said, “In essence what it has to do is meet an obscenity standard, and that’s federal case law, construing the First Amendment ... If it’s something that offends or shocks the public conscience then that’s a wholly different description than the impression I got the night of the last council meeting.”
Ballew said she is not sure if she will attend the council meeting on the 16th. She said she wants to contact the owner of the property “to find out why he’s allowing that to be out beside the road. He’s the owner, he should be able to do something.”
She may get her wish.
Paul Ross, one of the owners of the property along with Darrell Lents, said he had not heard about the sign until a reporter’s phone call.
“I will go look at it, though, and if there is something that is obscene we’ll see that it’s removed,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

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