MILFORD, PA — True to their word, Milford Township officials have begun the process of evaluating whether a gentlemen’s cabaret can continue to operate in their comfortable Philadelphia, PA, suburb.On Wednesday night, a public meeting allowed area residents to share their thoughts about the town’s only adult-entertainment business, Coyotes Show Club. According to PhillyBurbs.com, more than 100 Milford residents and interested parties from neighboring cities turned out for the meeting.

Some consider the issue a moral one.

“We would like them all to go home,” Ken Dieterly reportedly said before the hearing began. “If they want to have a restaurant, we might patronize it, but not a strip club. We think strip clubs are morally bad.”

Gina Adornetto added, “I have children. I certainly wouldn’t want my 15-year-old daughter, when she’s of age, to get a job there, or her friends.”

Adornetto also said the club would leave a bad impression of Milford in the minds of visitors who encountered it along the Pennsylvania Turnpike at the outskirts of town. Other residents acknowledged the club was one way — if a less-than-optimal one from their perspectives — that the club’s owners could make a go of things in a location that hasn’t been hospitable to other types of businesses. A restaurant previously located at the site closed due to lack of interest.

Glen McGogney, the attorney for the cabaret, said those who oppose the club should know it has a top-notch security force, is kept “immaculately clean” and will not be a hotbed for illegal activity.

As might be expected, out-of-towners with their own agendas also attended the meeting. Six members of the King’s Men, an anti-pornography religious group, stood in the back of the room holding signs that made their feelings quite clear: “Protect Your Children Now — Fight Porn” one exhorted.

“We’re the community, and we think we set the standards when it comes to obscenity,” King’s Men President Mark Houck of Quakertown said. “We want to tell the township officials we don’t want this in our community. When you bring in this kind of business, crime goes up, sexual deviancy goes up. We don’t want our kids to be exposed to it.”

If the township can’t run the club out of town completely, Houck said he hopes town fathers will at least install restrictions that would prohibit many of the popular activities at such venues — like lap dances.

Milford and Coyotes have been involved in a contentious feud about the club’s presence since it opened in mid-December. According to town officials, the club opened without a proper license and may be too near a public park to comply with the community’s zoning ordinances. In late December, the town obtained two restraining orders, one federal and one local, barring adult entertainment. Coyotes subsequently sued, claiming Milford’s zoning unconstitutionally restricts free speech. In early January, the two sides reached a compromise that allows Coyotes to continue operating while the township considers a zoning variance that would allow it to remain in open indefinitely. Under the terms of the compromise, a final decision must be reached by March 28th.

Although many area residents reportedly oppose Coyotes’ operation, some do not.

“It seems like a decent place,” Reggie Heffelfinger told PhillyBurbs.com. He and his wife visited the club and enjoyed the experience, he said. “[It’s] very clean; very professional. I don’t see a problem with this.”

Coyotes’ owners reserved the right to return their dispute to court if the township doesn’t give them an answer they like.

Coyotes isn’t the only cabaret in the Philadelphia area to cause a public outcry. Nearby Wilkes-Barre and Gentleman’s Club 10 have waged an ugly four-year battle over similar issues. Under applicable law, municipalities must schedule a hearing on adult-entertainment matters within a specified number of days after an application is filed. Wilkes-Barre officials never scheduled a hearing for Gentleman’s Club 10, according to court records, so the cabaret called for automatic approval of its business license, as was its option under the law. The city balked, and the matter ended up in court, where Gentleman’s Club 10 prevailed in 2006.

But that’s not the end of the story. Since then, the town has tried to squeeze Gentleman’s Club 10 out with zealous enforcement of a new “decency law” that requires all dancers to be at least 20 feet from patrons and bans touching.

“You can’t outlaw these places, but you can control and regulate the conduct that’s in there to the point where it is not desirable to do business here,” Wilkes-Barre’s attorney, Bruce Phillips, told PhillyBurbs.com

Gentleman’s Club 10 claims it is not subject to the decency law, because it was operating before the law was passed.

“We told them we don’t recognize this,” club owner Sal Scalzo responded. “They did this post-permitting… All they’ve done is create a monopoly for us.”

The county reportedly will tackle the issue later this year.

Coopersburg has been fighting both a cabaret and a swingers club. It managed to close the swingers club in exchange for dropping a mountain of fines levied against the owners, but borough officials continue to battle Silhouette Showbar over nude dancing.

After the Coyotes situation erupted in Milford, Quakertown rushed to draft ordinances restricting adult entertainment before any venues sneaked inside its borders.

“The common purveying of sexually intonated entertainment is not good for the fabric of the local community or America,” Quakertown Council President Jim Roberts told PhillyBurbs.com