The Texas House has passed a bill restricting “overtly sexually suggestive” high school cheerleading performances. The AP reports that sponsor Rep. Al Edwards (D) has a just a few issues:

“Girls can get out and do all of these overly sexually performances and we applaud them, and that’s not right” …

Edwards argued bawdy performances are a distraction for students resulting in pregnancies, dropouts and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Ribald performances are not defined in the bill. “Any adult that’s been involved with sex in their lives, they know it when they see it,” he said.

While I wasn’t aware of the link between cheerleading and public health risks before, I’m pretty sure I intuited the connection between cheerleading and sex — or at least sexy girls — in about the sixth grade (that would approximate the age at which I became aware of sex). At my Florida high school in the late ’70’s, the crowd was not watching the hotties on the field in order to to grade their team precision. Cheerleading has been about sexual attraction since girls replaced boys on the sideline.

Edwards falls into the same quaint American tradition as the folks who sought to ban rock & roll dance in the ’50’s, and, worse, outlaw Kevin Bacon’s radical dance stylings in the ’80s. The stakes are never as high as these Puritans think. If Edwards’ first instinct was to applaud, he should have listened to his id.

(hat tip: BoingBoing.net)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 5th, 2005 at 12:20 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, Funny ... to us, Politically Correct ... and stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.