Ask anyone in Louisiana to name the most pressing challenges facing the state, and you’ll get a laundry list of serious issues: our woeful public education system, battered infrastructure, rising health insurance and flood insurance costs, coastal erosion and a crucial, looming budget battle over how to best spend taxpayer dollars.

Democratic Louisiana state Sen. John Smith of Leesville, however, is thinking about sex. Smith’s Senate Bill No. 712 purports to “regulate sexually oriented businesses and their employees.” Smith’s concerned that, say, an adult video store could open next to a church or school, apparently unaware that no city council is going to let that happen anyway.

The most interesting part of all of this is, in my opinion, the fact that Smith has gone out of his way to spend office time detailing what he deems needed for the bill language.

For example, “Nudity or state of nudity means the showing of the human male or female genitals, pubic area, vulva, anus, anal cleft or cleavage with less than a fully opaque covering, or the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple or areola.”

And for the unaware, Smith offers a helpful primer on sex toys: “Sexual device means any three-dimensional object designed and marketed for stimulation of the male or female genitals, anus, female breast, or for sadomasochistic use or abuse of oneself or others and shall include devices such as dildos, vibrators, penis pumps, and physical representations of the human genital organs.”

Gee, Senator, do you think you can get your mind out of the gutter and work on something… you know… important?

“We have an opportunity to give some money back to the people, while we sit here awash in money,” said Smith, R-Bossier City.

Well, the money most likely shouldn’t have been taken from the people in the first place, but at least Louisiana law factory workers like Smith are looking in the right direction for money in the state’s surplus. In fact, there is serious talk about completely getting rid of the state income tax until 2017.

Theoretically, the idea would appeal to many voters: a gradual phase-out of income taxes until 2017, when they would disappear entirely. In an increasingly conservative Legislature, with many freshmen who ran on anti-tax platforms, voting “yes” has its merits.

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