Texas is about to make it more expensive to watch a little bump and grind.
In what some have dubbed the “pole tax,” the Lone Star State will require its 150 or so strip clubs to collect a $5-per-customer levy, with most of the proceeds going to help rape victims. The tax goes into effect on New Year’s Day.
Club owners and some of their customers say the money is going to a noble cause, but they argue that the tax infringes on their First Amendment right to freedom of expression, that it will drive some bars out of business and that it unfairly links their industry to sex crimes.
“We’ll be fine. I’ve already stopped advertising, and we’re raising our cover charges. But this is going to kill some of the smaller clubs,” said Dawn Rizos, who with her husband runs the Lodge, a Hemingway-inspired place that has exotic animal heads on the walls and is packed after Dallas Cowboys games at nearby Texas Stadium. (emphasis mine)
Well no duh on that one. On top of the moralistic asshattery involved in assuming that access to strippers translates to rape, both small-scale operators AND customers with less money get screwed (the larger, fancier places that can afford such an expense tend to cost more already). Besides that, there’ve already been cases of strip clubs elsewhere having charity drives voluntarily, so even if it were somehow just to wield such power in the first place — which it damn sure isn’t — it wouldn’t be necessary to any cause.
So, what right-wing religious goof is behind this one?
Supporters of the tax say they are not out to close the clubs — that would just mean less money for victims of sexual assault.
“This is an industry that largely employs women, and this gives them an opportunity to raise funds for a crime that affects women,” said state Rep. Ellen Cohen, a Houston Democrat who sponsored the bill, approved by the Legislature in May. (emphasis mine)
Whoops. Scratch that motive…
So what are we looking at here? A perversion of feminism? Is Ellen someone who seriously believes, in the face of all reason, that looking at women get naked warps men into violence-prone Neanderthals? Maybe just a garden variety prude?
“I’ve been told the fees to get into these places can be $10, $15. I don’t think another $5 is going to prevent someone from going,” said Cohen, who is also president of a women’s center that could get financing from the new law. (emphasis mine)
I wonder what percentage of that money would end up in her pocket, as opposed to actually helping anyone…
Strippers > politicians. The fact that strippers don’t force you to give them money at gunpoint, and you actually get what you want out of the exchange makes that quite clear.
