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Pittsburgh- from www.post-gazette.com – An old saying goes: “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.”

That’s particularly true of strip club legislation. City Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith [pictured] is behind a bill designed to take the fun out of seeing women bounce around naked.

Though it’s been a very long time since I’ve darkened a strip joint’s door, I expect the rules haven’t changed much over the years (or the leers). Patrons tucking dollar tips in the dancers’ garters or G-strings is generally seen as proper etiquette in this milieu.

In Pittsburgh, however, Mrs. Kail-Smith’s bill would prohibit that. Money would have to go in tip jars, and the bill would also require women who’ve already danced their clothes off to maintain a minimum six-foot distance from customers.

Who’s going to police that? Ooh, pick me, Sarge.

There are more rules about mingling and lighting, but I’m not sure why, with all the city’s other problems, this is suddenly a pressing issue. (Oops. Check that. There are all kinds of rules against pressing.)

It’s not that this bill is entirely without merit. There’s a reference in the bill to sexually transmitted diseases being a legitimate health concern, and that offering private or semi-private booths or cubicles encourages prostitution.

That may be a decent argument, but no man has ever gone home with a venereal disease and successfully explained to his wife or girlfriend, “Honest, honey, all I did was tip her a dollar while she danced. She must be really sick. Hey, what are you doing with that knife?”

An old judicial philosopher once said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” Do we want to be a city where the right to offer a tip ends where, ahem, never mind. Maybe I should quit citing old sayings.

Even writing about this makes me uncomfortable. The level of detail in this bill is excruciating: “Semi-Nude or Semi-Nudity means the showing of the female breast below a horizontal line across the top of the areola and extending across the width of the breast … ”

Enough already. Poets, not the lawyers, should be the only ones writing about breasts.

Mrs. Kail-Smith said she’s meeting with representatives of “the industry” and is open to amendments, but the rules against touching are for the safety of the entertainers and the tip ban is already in effect in at least one place.

Companion legislation would make strip clubs, adult bookstores and other adult businesses allowable in certain industrial zones. That’s needed, she says, to protect the city against discrimination claims.

Such places don’t meet the zoning requirements anywhere in the city now, but that hasn’t stopped them from springing up. Just last week, Pittsburgh’s zoning board of adjustment gave the ancient Downtown strip joint, Blush, the right to expand — just a garter’s throw from the city school CAPA (grades 6-12) and the Urban Pathways Charter School (preschool through 12th grade).

(Blush’s ads inform us that the featured dancer last week was Daisy Duxxx. There’s no word on whether her brother, Donald, is touring with Chippendales.)

Pittsburgh never has had much luck trying to get tough with its exotic dancers or porn theaters. Its fight to get control over the Garden Theater on the North Side went on longer than the Afghan War.

A Manhattan attorney for the porn palace told me in 1999 he considered “porn” a pejorative term and gave the standard free speech arguments. (It’s amazing how many people go into porn for the principal of the thing, as if the signs out front say “Totally First Amendment.”)

The Garden Theater owner finally sold the place to the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2007 for $1.1 million, only after the city had spent about that much in legal bills fighting to wrest it from them.

It’s possible that fight would have ended more quickly and cheaply if the city gave the owners another place to screen naked people. Mrs. Kail-Smith says setting aside certain industrial zones for adult businesses “is absolutely necessary to eliminate any perception of arbitrary decision-making by public officials based upon vague standards.”

There isn’t a G-string or a tip jar big enough to carry all the money it takes to fight these legal battles. The Garden Theater lawyer did concede one use of the pejorative when he said, “An obscene offer — we’ll take it.”