Ice fishing is a unique sport/outdoor activity, one that often leads to construction of various temporary structures to support the fishing. Claiming that ice fishing structures “lead to another problem: prostitution” is certainly a new take, though. But that’s what Hudson (Ohio) mayor Craig Shubert said during a meeting Tuesday, as per Olivia Mitchell of Cleveland.com:
Shubert raised an altogether different concern.
“If you open this up to ice fishing, while on the surface it sounds good, then what happens next year?” Shubert asked. “Does someone come back and say ‘I want an ice shanty on Hudson Springs Park, for X amount of time?’ And then if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that leads to another problem: prostitution. And now you’ve got the police chief and the police department involved.”
Look, the idea of “prostitution” happening around ice fishing (or any other sort of winter camping) is patently absurd. Ice fishing conditions are not comfortable conditions for anyone, and it’s quite amazing that someone in an elected office like mayor would suggest that there’s sexual activity going on there without providing any evidence to support that.
But, as Mitchell’s piece notes, this is not the first time that Shubert has made unverifiable complaints. He previously suggested that “school board members were peddling child pornography,” and that saw him rebuked by the Summit County prosecutor. We’ll see if there’s further backlash against him over this particular claim. But it really is amazing that anyone elected mayor would think there’s “prostitution” going on in ice fishing shanties.
[Cleveland.com; photo via ABC 6]
