Let me start by stating that I take no position one way or the other on the ethics behind having topless employees at a nightclub in the city of Lewiston.

That said, however, the issue at hand is not in what any of us feel is right or wrong. But, instead, revolves around whether or not the law has been broken. The issue brings back to memory the case of two female University of Maine students who were acquitted on an indecent exposure charge because of the way the law was written. As I haven’t had an opportunity to view the actual Lewiston ordinance in question, I am going by the story as it appeared in the Sun Journal May 13.

If, indeed, the city ordinance specifically outlaws nude entertainment, then it is my argument that no laws have been broken. Even if we consider topless waitstaff to be a form of entertainment, the waitresses were not “nude” according to the definition of the word, which means “to be completely unclothed or uncovered.”

Even then, in our great state, fault may still be questionable. It is my belief that one cannot be found guilty of indecent exposure unless the genitals are exposed, which was the technicality the female students used in their case.

Christopher Crowley, Sabattus

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