For the last two years, the 2200 Club, now a gay bathhouse, has been the subject of intense scrutiny by the SDPD and the City Attorney’s Office.

The charges against the club, its owners and the owners of the property where it resides began when Casey Gwinn was the city attorney.

During his eight years as city attorney, Gwinn vowed to close down all adult businesses within the city of San Diego, and succeeded in closing about half of them. And, as the Kroll report noted, Gwinn believed he was above following the law for political expediency.

Gwinn’s assault on the gay bathhouse began years ago when it was Club Mustang. It is now the 2200 Club, and resides at a site that has been a private adult gay club for 21 years.

There has been an unwritten agreement between the gay community and the police and city attorney for decades. To discourage public sex, gay bathhouses can exist as private clubs, where it is widely assumed that sexual activity may take place. It takes place in private; out of public view. The buildings are inconspicuous and condoms and other safer-sex materials are widely available.

If there is drug use going on inside a bathhouse, then that’s another story. As this paper has editorialized about for months, this community does not condone nor support meth dealing and use. It’s killing our brothers and sisters. And federal law makes it crystal clear that owners of property who know their businesses are being used for drug activity will lose their property.

If Police Chief William Lansdowne and City Attorney Mike Aguirre had proof there was meth dealing going on in any gay business, this paper would support closure of the business as a public nuisance. But that’s not the case.

The current controversy with the 2200 Club stems from the gay bathhouse renting a room to two undercover vice officers. We all know the city has a $1.5 billion deficit. It can’t keep police officers, let alone maintain city services. And yet there’s money for vice officers to join a gay club and then strip down naked, wearing only a towel.

It sounds like a form of sexual harassment of the cops. Straight cops hate doing this. And that’s why they’re making some guy who likes to visit bathhouses their agent.

And what about the privacy rights of the members of the club? I’m sure some are trolling after the cops, thinking they’re “new meat.”

And, ironically, it was only recently that Casey Gwinn took the firing of a gay cop (for appearing nude on his own Web site) all the way to the Supreme Court for conduct unbecoming a police officer.

And now SDPD pays cops to do this? It’s so absurd.

Let’s be very real about all this. If the 2200 Club merely changed its name to Church of Peace, Enlightenment, Nature, Inspiration and Spirituality (P.E.N.I.S.) it would be exempt from most rules, including taxation.

The Church of P.E.N.I.S. practices phallicism. It’s ancient. In fact, the standard dictionary defines phallicism as worship of the phallus. A phallus is typically used in art and religious practices because it is a symbol of male generative power.

So we’re not gay or homosexuals anymore. No more tops and bottoms. We’re phallicists. And we’re not entitled to equal rights but superior rights.

And that’s because, according to Congress and the Supreme Court, we should be exempt from federal and state laws that burden our religious practices.

So the city can hardly close our places of worship because we rent pews to two persons. We can open a place of phallic worship anywhere we want.

In his very first opinion as chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts ruled in our favor. In short, a federal law made it illegal for a religious group to import a controlled substance for its religious practices.

The law, of course, was neutral, applying to everyone. But the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires the courts to examine whether a law creates a substantial burden to the free exercise of one’s religious beliefs and practices.

The religious group said the religious rite just wasn’t the same without the drug, and wanted the government to exempt it from the law, which the government refused to do. The court held that the government has the burden of showing why an exemption is unreasonable. Otherwise it must show a compelling government interest, an extremely high burden.

The government couldn’t show it there, and wouldn’t show it here with the 2200 Club.