In last week's decision to uphold a ban on nude dancing in Erie, Penn., Justice Sandra Day O'Connor waltzed around the First Amendment protection of "expressive conduct" by arguing that the Erie ordinance was regulating conduct, not symbolic speech. O'Connor reasoned that since it targeted the "secondary effects" of lowlife behavior outside the strip club Kandyland, the pasties and G-strings requirement didn't limit expression.

Hypocritical horndog Clarence Thomas joined Antonin Scalia concurring in the decision but "disagreed with the mode of analysis." Thomas dittoed Scalia that nude dancing is not protected expression: "There is no need to identify 'secondary effects' associated with nude dancing that Erie could properly seek to eliminate. The traditional power of government to foster good morals, and the acceptability of the traditional judgment that nude public dancing itself is immoral, have not been repealed by the First Amendment." Plus G-strings will keep those pesky pubic hairs off your Coke.

In his dissent, John Paul Stevens (joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg) jumped on the absurdities like a lap dancer. "In what can most delicately be characterized as an enormous understatement," he wrote, "the plurality concedes that 'requiring dancers to wear pasties and G-strings may not greatly reduce these secondary effects,'" such as increases in crime, prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases.

How did the justices determine that fabric slivers would save our neighborhoods and were worth limiting freedom of speech? Did they "know it when they saw it" -- or had they even seen it?

To gauge the expression of All Nude Girls, I decided to take in their symbolic speech myself. Unless I saw, I would never know if communication of a bare nipple is muffled by a tiny doily or a mohawk of pubic hair by a thong. I wondered if any justices had used the ruling like I did, as a good excuse for their first visit to a strip club.

I invited my friend Karen, who had been to stripper bars before, and my friend Julia, who had not. We picked a "Gentlemen's Club" in downtown Washington with no cover or drink minimum. As we waited in line, I asked the chatty doorman about the Supreme Court ruling, and he quickly answered, "It's expression as far as I'm concerned." He then defended the stripping biz with logic as twisty as O'Connor's: A) His day job is teaching autistic children, so B) he's a good guy, so C) strip clubs must be OK.

As we walked in, a wholesome redhead named Angel was swinging her bare moneymaker around the tiny stage, a 5-foot square raised a foot-and-a-half off the ground. A horizontal bar hung above; the girls steadied themselves with it, swung from it and occasionally did pull-ups. The ceiling was low enough that the tallest girl, a Russian immigrant called Star, scraped her platform shoe on it during a Rockette kick.

Next page | Angel's crotch did personalize her expression