Many of the things I enjoy in life (smoking, drinking, kicking children who speak out of turn) are either illegal or subject to a sin tax. Luckily, most of the laws against my illegal vices are unenforceable if I commit infractions discretely. (“I don’t know what happened to little Jimmy. He must have fallen onto my foot.”) But I can’t avoid sin taxes — and thus I can’t stand them.

First of all, they are regressive. Secondly, they’re anti-business. So we literally have a tax regime that freedom-loving progressives and money-loving conservatives should hate, and yet sin taxes continue to be an acceptable way for the government to shove its morality down our throats.

The Texas Supreme Court is wrestling with just such a question of morality versus freedom and money. Specifically, it’s a battle between morality and the freedom to stuff money into a g-string. The Austin-American Statesman reports:

Is exotic dancing, performed partially clothed or fully nude, a form of free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution?

Strip club owners insist that it is, and on Thursday they asked the Texas Supreme Court to strike down the state’s $5-per-patron tax as an unconstitutional limit on free expression.

Of course, proponents of the tax can’t just come out and say “we hate men who like to look at nude women.” Check out the hook they’re trying to hang their abuse of legislative power on…

Continue reading “No Sin Taxes in the Champagne Room”