Kerre Woodham: Cheerleaders provide a bit of harmless entertainment

I reckon those good ol' boys in Texas have got more in common with the Muslim fundamentalists they want to rid the earth of than they'd care to believe.

Lawmakers in President Bush's home state have voted to ban overtly sexually suggestive routines from cheerleading performances at school-sponsored events.

They claim the pompom girls' bump-and-grind routines are lascivious exhibitions that distract high school students, undermine high school morality (surely a contradiction in terms) and furthermore result in pregnancies and the spread of nasty sexual diseases.

The link, of course, has no basis in fact but that hasn't stopped Al Edwards, the bill's supporter, from putting the blame for these social ills on the cheerleaders' taut and tight cha-chas being shaken in front of impressionable youngsters. The problem is that the bill, which now goes before the Senate, fails to define exactly what is meant by sexually suggestive.

Al, who incidentally is a Democrat, says that any adult who's been involved with sex in their lives will know it when they see it.

Therein lies the conundrum. Lewdness is surely in the eye of the beholder. Some people can look at healthy young people in skimpy clothing and appreciate them as gorgeous wee things in the prime of their lives, providing a bit of halftime entertainment.

Others clearly see them as sexual sirens out to lure good and godly young folk away from the path of righteousness and into the Devil's lair.

How can you police such a subjective law? Knowing it when you see it simply isn't good enough. It depends on who's doing the looking.

I suppose this sort of public morality legislation was inevitable. As we all know the attitudinal pendulum has always swung backwards and forwards between conservatism and liberalism and given the fuss over Janet Jackson's much maligned and totally underwhelming nipple, this sort of reactionary legislation was bound to happen sooner rather than later. I can only imagine the mad mullahs reading this story off the internet, and thinking they couldn't do better themselves.