By Lewis Loflin
Washington County, Tennessee, Nashville, and Sullivan County have all jumped into the fray, obsessed with stamping out “sin” at the behest of Bible-thumping fundamentalists. Adult bars like Show Palace and Bottoms Up weren’t family-friendly—no one said they were—but they were legal. That didn’t stop officials from abusing the law to break it, a pattern echoing into 2025 with the Trump administration facing lawfare over immigration enforcement.
This isn’t new. In 2000, Sullivan County’s religious wars kicked off when Carletta Sims and the World Union of Deists challenged the “Release Time” program. The school board killed it rather than share it, and Commissioner Mike “Boss Hogg” Gonce rammed through a Ten Commandments Plaque Resolution, threatening lawsuits against dissenters like me. The Adult Entertainment Commission followed, vowing to crush legal businesses.
The tactic is chilling: shut down anything the powerful deem a threat. Licensing, zoning, “safety,” and “nuisance” laws become weapons. No matter how many hoops you jump through, permits vanish. Ron Ramsey bragged, “We will put them out of business,” and Show Palace and Bottoms Up got buried under impossible rules—sign permits denied until lawyers stepped in, beer licenses yanked with flimsy excuses.
It’s broader than strip bars. Bristol, Tennessee, at Bristol Motor Speedway’s (BMS) urging, banned ticket sales above their price with the “Scalping Law.” Wytheville, Virginia, crushed peddlers and flea markets with its “Peddler Ordinance” to shield local merchants—their buddies—from competition.
In Pound, Virginia, it got absurd: a country-music dance hall was outlawed because a church called dancing a sin. They dragged it to court, piling on legal costs until the business folded—lawfare in action, just like Sullivan County’s strip bar squeeze. It’s not about crime; it’s about control, a playbook now scaling up in 2025 as state, federal, and local governments, both parties, weaponize lawfare against Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Fast forward to 2025: lawfare—legal warfare to thwart policy—is exploding. Trump’s immigration enforcement faces a barrage from blue states, red states, and locals, all abusing government power to obstruct. It’s the same game Sullivan County played—regulate, litigate, eliminate—now on a national stage. Both parties are guilty, turning courts into battlegrounds while ignoring real issues like crime or poverty.
Back then, crime rose after Show Palace and Bottoms Up closed—ironic, since crime was never the point. BMS floods the county with drunks, yet “safety” only matters when it’s convenient. Tennessee courts rubber-stamped this nonsense, from the Court of Appeals (details) to the Supreme Court. Who’s next? Where does it stop? Focus on real crime, not law-abiding citizens’ choices.
Update for 2008: All appeals failed; local laws were upheld.
John Nelson Darby
Christian Premillennialism