This lap-dancing thing has us puzzled.

Ames Police Chief Dennis Ballantine says lap-dancing leads to prostitution, so he wants it outlawed. (If you're of the generation that doesn't know what lap-dancing is, read on. We'll get to a rather technical definition in a few paragraphs.) As proof, he cites the arrest for prostitution of a lap-dancer at Blondie's.

He says other lap-dancers have been involved in prostitution, too, though there have been no other arrests.

Since lap-dancing regularly occurs at three Ames establishments, you have to conclude one of two things:

1. Most lap-dancing ends with lap-dancing.
2. The police aren't enforcing the prostitution laws.

Neither one of those conclusions seems to warrant an ordinance to make lap-dancing illegal, an ordinance that was given first approval by the City Council Tuesday night.

If it doesn't lead to prostitution, why outlaw it?

If it does lead to prostitution, why not just enforce the prostitution laws?

This is a dangerous slope the chief and the counsel have set foot on. It's intruding into the private lives of people with the vaguest of justifications and the slimmest of legality, though Ames City Attorney John Klaus has found two federal cases that he says "have held that regulations of this kind do not unconstitutionally burden essential rights of free speech protected by the First Amendment." (Though there's not much talking during lap-dancing, it is a form of speech, most scholars would agree.)

Nevertheless, "the Ames City Council may want to ask itself whether the private conduct of consenting grown-ups is an appropriate subject for its attention," the Iowa Civil Liberties Union said this week. "One could wonder what the council would consider doing next: outlaw kissing on the first date or necking in the back of a theater?"

Lap-dancing isn't exactly kissing. It is, in the words of the proposed ordinance drawn up by Klaus, when an entertainer in a bar or adult-entertainment business "shall fondle, caress or sit on the lap of any customer on said premises if the entertainer presents a performance on the premises while nude or so attired as to leave exposed the entertainer's genitals, or pubic hair, or anus, or buttocks, or female breast, or female breast with only the nipple covered."

It goes on to say that "'Fondle or caress' shall mean to bring any part of the body into contact with the body of another, in a sportive or suggestive manner, for the purpose of producing or experiencing sexual arousal or excitement."

The proposed ordinance is as bizarre as the language is stilted. Exactly who is going to determine the state of mind of the sportive or affectionate lap-dancer? If she says she was lap-dancing merely for entertainment - and that she certainly didn't intend to sexually excite the owner of the lap - who can challenge her? Further, this seems to say that lap-dancing is OK by people who aren't entertainers - the lady at the next table, for instance - but is a "municipal infraction" if done by an entertainer.

All that is amusing, but irrelevant.

For it's really quite simple.

You enforce laws by arresting the law breakers, not by harassing everyone else.

If bank robbery is a problem, you don't outlaw banking.

If carjacking is a problem, you don't outlaw driving.

If street-walking is a problem, you don't outlaw walking.

Or, in this case, dancing.

Even if it's on someone's lap.