Court Opinion

ID: 9764982
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:47:15.629024+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:52:39.702220
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority tries to justify its novel and shocking ruling by suggesting that they are defending the individual from state intervention on questions of morality and personal conscience. Regrettably this theory ignores the facts of the case before the court.1 This is not a case of private, intimate conduct between consenting adults.
*101Appellees, Mildred Kannitz, known on the stage as “Dawn Delight” and Shanne Wimbel are “exotic” dancers. Appellees, Patrick Gagliano and Michael Bonadio are employees of the Penthouse Theater in downtown Pittsburgh, in which Ms. Delight and Ms. Wimbel perform. In March of last year, plainclothes police officers went to the Penthouse Theater, paid an admission fee, entered the theater, and viewed the performances of Ms. Delight and Ms. Wimbel. During the course of these performances Ms. Delight and Ms. Wimbel engaged in sexual acts with members of the audience. The police officers arrested the two performers, the patrons who participated in the sexual acts, as well as the theater’s cashier, Bonadio, and the theater’s manager, Gagliano. Ms. Delight and Ms. Wimbel were each charged by information with one count each of voluntary deviate sexual intercourse pursuant to 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 3124. Messrs. Bonadio and Gagliano were charged with one count each of criminal conspiracy.
The majority attempts to avoid the privacy issue2 by reasoning that there was not a valid exercise of the state’s police power in the prohibition of this type of conduct. The absurdity of such a position does not require demonstration. Here we have a public display of the most depraved type of sexual behavior for pay. Any member of the public who pays the fee can witness and participate in this conduct. That the majority would suggest that this is beyond the state’s power to regulate public health, safety, welfare, and morals is incredible. I assume that regulation of prostitution and hard core pornography are also now prohibited by todays ruling.
Finally, the majority’s conclusion that the statute violates equal protection presents a “red herring.” Concern over the marital exception contained within the voluntary deviate sexual intercourse statute, is misplaced, for the heart of this *102exception is the intimacy and warmth of a private marital sexual relationship. Here the sexual acts were performed in public and in return for monetary compensation. It is therefore clear that the marital status of the participants in this conduct would not have affected their culpability. To suggest that the marital exception was intended to insulate a marital couple who performed deviate sexual acts for public display for pay would distort the obvious legislative objective in providing for this exception. The marital exception was designed to protect the intimacy and privacy of the marital unit. It did not give married couples the license to publicly engage in lewd and lascivious public acts.

. A facial analysis is clearly inappropriate in this instance. Such an approach has only been judicially sanctioned in response to first amendment claims.

. The court below declared the statute constitutionally infirm as an invasion of privacy. The assertion of a privacy right, however, is completely out of place in light of the present factual predicate. Arguments regarding private sexual conduct are totally irrelevant in the instant appeal, where the sexual activity involved was public.