By Joe Schoenmann

Thu, Apr 24, 2008 (2 a.m.)

In most of Clark County, female massage therapists who work for licensed businesses can massage the aching backs and necks of men. The same holds true for male therapists and female clients.

But if you travel to clients’ homes and work independently, you can massage only persons of the same sex. Get caught massaging the neck of someone of the opposite sex and you could find yourself out of business.

That’s what’s happening to one therapist who broke into tears after pleading her case to the Las Vegas City Council last week.

The woman, who did not want her name used, was cited by Metro Police months ago after getting a call for a massage at a hotel. She arrived at a hotel room to find men she described as “very crude and vulgar.” They were Metro vice officers, she said. After refusing to give them a sexual massage, she was ticketed for giving massages to men.

Both Clark County and the city of Las Vegas have ordinances that allow only those working in licensed “establishments” to provide cross-gender massages. Employees for those establishments also may go on calls and do cross-gender massages.

The intent of the laws, which date to the late 1990s, was to combat prostitution.

Now independent outcall therapists who can’t touch anyone of the opposite sex are starting to fight back.

An online petition (www.petitiononline.com/massage/petition.html) had been signed by 283 people as of Wednesday. One therapist said an unidentified state legislator has promised to look into it.

The effort comes too late, though, to help the woman at last week’s council meeting. At the meeting, Mayor Oscar Goodman told her she needed to find a lawyer.

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Roughly 40 residents turned up for an open-door meeting with the mayor Friday morning to talk about issues from the hepatitis C scare to the theft of copper wire to bad laws on the books.

One of the more poignant moments came when a man, holding a tiny video recorder pointed at himself as he talked, implored the mayor to put the doctors of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada in prison.

Goodman replied that if the city went after the doctors for breaking city ordinances, at best the doctors might face jail time of up to six months. But if that happened, he added, it would prevent other authorities from prosecuting them for more serious crimes and giving them potentially longer sentences.

“I don’t know how much longer I have to live,” said the man, who is living with a hepatitis C infection contracted many years ago.

He also asked Goodman how he came up with $500,000, the amount of the fine that doctors for the clinic paid to the city a few weeks ago.

“It’s something I can put in my pocket,” he replied.

The city plans to use the money to help clinic victims.