My first thought about Assembly Bill 1551, which adds a sales tax to adult businesses and products and designates the money to fund programs to fight criminal activity, is that it’s not the first time we’ve taxed something to pay for something unrelated. California taxes things like gasoline and cigarettes and then directs the money into vaguely related things, like health care for kids.

But reading through the Adult Video News piece NSFW I was reminded of the difference. Porn is speech. Well, content is speech, anyway; I suppose a DVD might be a commodity. And you can’t tax speech on the basis of its content.

According to AVN, the Free Speech Coalition is going to Sacramento on April 22-23 to protest the proposal, although it doesn’t seem to have any information about that on its site.