No Cheers for the Texas Cheerleading Law

The State House in Texas has passed a bill that would outlaw sexually suggestive routines by high school cheerleaders. I’m glad to see that the biggest educational problem in my home state is the performances by our cheer squads.

Sure, a lot of cheerleading routines have become somewhat lewd. The culture in general is overly lewd, but passing vague, restrictive laws is the wrong reaction. How is a government organization going to decide what is sexually suggestive and what isn’t?

This is an entirely local matter. It’s incumbent on communities to decide what is appropriate for their high schoolers. If parents decide the routines being taught their children are too lewd, there is no doubt they’d be able to wage a successful protest. No high school cheerleading choreographer has more power than parents. And any parent that thinks the situation requires state intervention needs to remember that, as a parent, they are ultimately responsible for what their children do and do not do. Abdicating that responsibility to the state government is both bad governing and bad parenting.

In situations where cheerleading routines have become too lewd for a community’s tastes, we don’t need more laws, we need more community responsibility. Otherwise, if the community is ok with the routines, the state government has no right to intervene.