In the spring of 2006, Charles T. Craton III, a businessman in northwestern Georgia, finest identified for his work on Chick-fil-A’s “Eat Mor Chikin” marketing campaign, opened Entice Adult Superstore. “I did expect there to be controversy,” Craton later advised the Rome News-Tribune. But, he went on, “you’d have thought I killed the Lindbergh baby, sunk the Lusitania, and started World War II.” There had by no means been a porn store in Floyd County—though, as Craton had found, no ordinance barred them. The county fee subsequently handed one; Craton unsuccessfully challenged it. But he was allowed to remain open so long as he modified the shop’s identify to Entice Couples Boutique and promised that not more than thirty-five per cent of his stock could be dildos and different “adult novelties.”
By that point, Craton had been expelled from the Coosa Country Club, in Rome, which is in Georgia’s Fourteenth Congressional District. The membership provided Craton a number of causes for his expulsion along with his possession of Entice. A Coosa member is alleged to have resigned “because of a known pornographer”—Craton—among the many membership, and since Craton’s spouse allegedly appeared on a “pornographic Web site.” All this, the membership maintained, endangered “the good order, welfare and character of the Club.”
Craton, who had been a Coosa member for 4 years, sued the membership for 5 million {dollars}. “This is me standing my ground against the moral elitists of Rome, Georgia,” he advised the News-Tribune. His lawsuit famous that he had “conducted himself, at all times, on and off the club premises, as a gentleman.” Craton additionally printed an open letter within the paper, addressed to “The Members of Coosa Country Club,” by which he referred to “felony crimes” and “public drunkenness” by fellow-members, and talked about “illegal gambling in the men’s locker room.” The letter went on, “If the Coosa Country Club Board is going to conduct witch hunts, then for God’s sake, let’s find all the witches.” It concluded, “Once we investigate who all the witches are, there won’t be any members left.”
The go well with was dismissed earlier than Craton might inform his Coosa tales to a jury. “Private clubs are the last bastion of legal prejudice,” he advised the News-Tribune, after the choice. He constructed himself a home with a view of the membership’s eighth gap.
“We called it the ‘porn hole,’ ” a former membership member, who believed that Craton had bought a uncooked deal, mentioned not too long ago. The membership’s “moral hypocrisy,” as the previous member put it, was on view once more this month, when Coosa welcomed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Greene and her husband, Perry, who runs a development firm, had been amongst eight new members talked about within the January version of the Coosa Chronicle, alongside with an engineer and an anesthesiologist. Greene’s admission was by no means put earlier than the Coosa membership committee, as is customary for a controversial determine, in line with a committee member who first realized of it on Twitter. Shortly earlier than becoming a member of Coosa, Greene described the occasions of January 6, 2021, as “just a riot at the Capitol.” The violence, she mentioned, was constant with the Declaration of Independence’s assist of “overthrowing tyrants.” (Any wrongdoing, she urged, was the work of the F.B.I.)
“They ran Craton off for ‘pornography,’ ” the previous member mentioned. “But they don’t seem to have a problem with an adulteress who promotes insurrection?” He mentioned he’d examine varied extramarital affairs that Greene allegedly performed years in the past—one with a person who, in line with the Daily Mail, now calls himself the Polyamorous Tantric Sex Guru on his OnlyFans web page—when she labored at a CrossFit fitness center outdoors Atlanta. (Greene’s workplace denied the affairs.)
He was not the one Coosa member to be perturbed. John Cowan, an area neurosurgeon, who misplaced to Greene in a main runoff, tweeted his response: “I hope she realizes she can’t handpick who else attends while she’s there like she does for her Townhall meetings.”
Entice Couples Boutique closed in 2015, and Craton moved on to different companies. By then, the Rome Area History Museum had printed a e-book titled “Legendary Locals of Rome.” The chapter “Outside the Box: Innovators and Rebels” opens with the story of Charles T. Craton III, who constructed “the largest store of its kind in the southeast.” ♦
