from www.myfoxdc.com – One American state is headed for a showdown over a move to rein in the adult-entertainment industry at a time when every job counts — even those of strippers, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Last month, the Republican-controlled legislature in Missouri passed one of the nation’s toughest state laws aimed at strip clubs and other adult-entertainment venues. It would ban nude dancing and the serving of alcohol in adult cabarets, force strip clubs to close at midnight and forbid semi-nude dancers from touching patrons.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon [pictured], a Democrat who counts job creation among his top priorities, must decide whether to sign or veto the bill. His spokesman said Nixon was still studying the measure. After July 10, it would become law automatically, and opponents promise a legal battle if that happens.

Proponents say they aim to set minimum standards for an industry that they claim demeans women and contributes to prostitution and related social ills.

“You’ve got very vulnerable people who are being coerced into being the fodder for some of these places,” said state Sen. Matt Bartle, the main champion of the bill, who has been pushing regulation of the industry for nearly a decade.

Club owners and dancers say that the venues rarely attract crime, and that the new rules would be so strict that hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in state revenue could be lost at a time when Missouri’s economy is struggling to recover from the recession.

The new legislation “was written to close us down,” said Dick Snow, owner of an all-nude cabaret called Bazooka’s Showgirls in a former warehouse district in Kansas City, Mo., that is now a popular arts area.

He said he and a partner have invested nearly $2 million in the club since the mid-1990s and employ about 135 people.

With a three-story atrium at the entrance and state-of-the-art lighting and sound, Bazooka’s does about 60 percent of its business after midnight, Mr. Snow said. His dancers earn most of their money not on stage but from socializing and providing customers with “booth dances” that would be illegal under the new law because they usually involve touching.

During these tough economic times, Snow said, crimping a legal business that backers claim employs about 3,000 people and brings in some $4.5 million of state sales taxes “makes no sense.”