Taboo sex shop faces closure; owner seeking way to stay open

Columbia City Hall has given the owner of the city’s only licensed sex shop until Friday to either close or purge its inventory to meet city codes.

Taboo Adult Superstore manager Larry Boyer said Wednesday that store owner Jeff White has told employees to remove the most explicit merchandise and try to keep Taboo open as a general retail business.

“We can sell certain stuff,” Boyer said. “We just have to make sure none of it shows any of that (anatomically explicit) kind of stuff.”

Columbia’s zoning office sent Taboo a letter on Jan. 28 notifying the owner that his “sexual device shop” is in violation of zoning laws that City Council adopted after Taboo opened legally four years ago. The letter said Taboo has until Friday to comply, Boyer said.

After loud complaints from nearby residents, council adopted a new law that restricts sexually oriented businesses to areas zoned light industrial and imposes greater distance buffers from churches and places where children gather. The store’s location at 4716 Devine St. is in a commercial corridor, not in a light industrial area.

Store owner White has argued the new law was written to target his business, which was legal when it opened under the old law. He said none of the sites identified under the new law is practical.

White sued on grounds that the new restrictions unconstitutionally violate the right of freedom of expression and fair treatment under the law. White was unavailable Wednesday but said in early January that he will fight the city to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Federal Judge Terry Wooten twice threw out Taboo’s lawsuit and ruled that changes to the zoning law as well as to the business license law are constitutional, said Pete Balthazor, one of two private lawyers the city hired to fight the suit.

In its attempt to show that the store was targeted by city officials, Taboo recently provided Wooten with an email in which Mayor Steve Benjamin wrote that he “hope(s) to push for a change in our 13-year-old insufficient approach to zoning, but I also plan to oppose and fight the opening of THIS business.” That is an apparent reference to Taboo, the judge wrote in his most recent ruling, issued Jan. 7.

That ruling reaffirms Wooten’s March 2015 decision tossing the case and deeming the city’s law valid. Taboo filed an appeal with the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 19. The ruling came two days after The State newspaper quoted White saying he planned to continue his fight to stay open.

“We weren’t ready for the zoning stuff,” Boyer said, adding that Taboo owners and employees thought they had time to block Wooten’s decision. “They kind of blindsided us.”

Columbia city attorney Teresa Knox said an appeal does not keep the city from taking action against Taboo.

Balthazor said the city’s zoning law stipulates what percentage of a store’s inventory may be sexually explicit enough to require a sexually oriented business license.

It appears Taboo is seeking a way to operate without requiring such a license.

“I’m just marking things down,” Boyer said. “Buy one get one for 50 percent.”

This story was originally published February 3, 2016 at 6:14 PM with the headline "Taboo sex shop faces closure; owner seeking way to stay open."