Anabela Mota Janke and why Fort Myers Beach is about to lose a lot of money

AP Photo/Courtesy Scott Janke. Anabela Mota Janke and her husband Scott

The story of Anabela Mota Janke might well go down as one of the great free speech cases of our time. Or as an alternative, you might think that Anabela Mota Janke's (some are spelling it Jenke) case will end up displaying the absurdity that the defense of the First Amendment has now become.

The essential background is that Anabela Mota Janke also performs as a porn "star" (we believe that "star" is the correct signifier for anyone in this industry: almost no one is ever described as a bit part player in porn films) under the name Jazella Moore. She even has her own website (here) which contains what might be called light cheesecake shots (certainly nothing so revealing as Playboy these days) and some dribs and drabs of cod philosohphy:

I discovered that by approaching sexual pleasure resolved of guilt and fear and with need distilled to shared, creative adventure, the paradox of the Madonna/Whore was broken and with that the power of ecstatic joy could triumph.

So I became a priestess of the erotic arts. Once these ideas were encountered, it was impossible for the spirit not to flourish, for the soul to heal, and body and mind to soar with new inspirations and ideals.

Err, yes dear: it's not all that unusual for girls educated by nuns to grow up into women who are indeed interested in sex. The Catholic Church would have many fewer adherents in this generation if that were not true.

However, this is not what has brought Anabela to fame from her origins in Portugal. No, she is married to Scott Janke, something which is no doubt very nice for both Scott and Anabela. Scott, until very recently, worked as the City Manager for Fort Myers Beach in Florida. Now he does not and the reason is that the City Council found out about Anabela/Jazella's extra-curricular activities. And so they fired him. Mayor Larry Kirker called an emergency town meeting and after a 5-0 vote, Scott Janke was fired.

Now, we might think that this is all just fine: how could anyone with such lax morals be left in charge of making sure that water came out of the taps and that sewage was properly treated afterwards.....well, that's where it really starts to become a problem. The sex life of Mr. and Mrs. Janke has no bearing at all upon Mr. Janke's ability to make sure that the nuts and bolts of running a town are catered to. We might or might not think him a suitable candidate for running the sex education classes in the local high school, but making sure the used condoms aren't swallowed by the manatees in the bay shouldn't be affected by the open or not nature of his marriage.

But this is just the start: it is of course his wife's job which is causing the outrage: what on earth do his wife's morals or not have to do with allocating parking spaces (as City Managers are known to do)? We can even go further. The Supreme Court has decided that pornography is protected speech under the First Amendment. Whether we think this should be so is very different from whether it is so: and it is so.

The end result of all of this is that Scott Janke seems to have been fired because his wife, Anabela Mota Janke, was exercising her rights to free speech under the First Amendment. Something which, at least as far as this reporter understands matters, is likely to become a very expensive firing by the City Council of Fort Myers Beach. We can't be fired for exercising our constitutionally protected rights: that's why they're protected rights. And we certainly can't be fired because a relative exercises their own such rights.

Expect a lawsuit in 3...2...1...