Bring 'Em Off

"It's just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they're shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down… And then we say to them, 'don't get involved in sex unless it's marriage or love, it's dangerous out there' and yet the teachers and directors are helping them go through those kind of gyrations."

So says Texas State Rep. Al Edwards of the scourge of suggestive cheerleading. Edwards has introduced a bill reducing state funding to school districts that knowingly permit "such a performance."

The most dismaying part of this story? Big Cheerleading is enthusiastic about the legislation—no doubt hoping to regulate competitors out of the market:

J.M. Farias, owner of Austin Cheer Factory, said cheerleading aficionados would welcome the law. Cheering competitions, he said, penalize for suggestive movements or any vulgarity.

"Any coaches that are good won't put that in their routines," he said. And, most girls cheering on Friday nights were trained by professionals who know better, he said.

"I don't think this law would really shake the industry at all. In fact, it would give parents a better feeling, mostly dads and boyfriends, too," Farias said.

So the real losers will be the mom-and-pop cheer squads who insist on their constitutional right to sexy cheerleading. (Is there any other kind of cheerleading?)