While the Bellevue City Council fumbles around with excuses about the legality of a drive-thru, while men drive up, park, and ogle at the young women behind the counter, while we decry the encroachment of immorality in our neighborhoods and communities when one bikini barista place moves in next door, we forget that hypocrisy lies just around the corner.

Although I find the location of the café unfortunate and although I am not pleased to have it in my neighborhood, when we in Bellevue sell ourselves to business development we cannot be surprised when it occasionally takes a turn we don’t agree with. Moreover, when we vote business-first candidates onto the City Council, we cannot complain when they fail to take ethical and moral stands against a business that taints our neighborhoods.

This café is a legal business. It has followed the rules. It has a right to exist. However, it also violates the values of our community.

Despite all this, it is hypocritical of us to demand that it change locations or be put out of business when we also willingly allow our children to watch far worse on our televisions, in our movie theaters, in our music and in the video games they play. This café is yet another distraction from the far more important issues that we actually need to be paying attention to. We still don’t have good health care. We still don’t have light rail. Tonight there will be Bellevue families who will once again not have the money to eat dinner.

As a father of a 5-year-old daughter, I am daily horrified by the routine objectification of women in the media and in society. This small café is just an extension of that social norm. I struggle to know how to respond if my daughter asks me about it. After all, Ariel and other Disney princesses teach my daughter similar things as the presence of scantily clad women working at this café. You are valued for how you look. Happiness is found in the approval of men.

Instead of complaining and making demands of City Council to take actions they lack the moral courage to take, I will simply do what I have done for the past five years. I will take my daughter to the library instead of turning on the television. I will teach her it’s better to use her mind and not her body to be respected. I will teach her that her value is not what she looks like, but who she is and how she treats others.

Paul Sutton lives in Bellevue.