By Prudence Beecher
Special to YNOT

LOS ANGELES – It’s not every day I get a great idea from reading something other than the Bible, but recently I had one of those days when I read a column Sally Satel wrote for Forbes.

To be clear, I don’t agree at all with the points made by Satel (who I assume, based on her alliterative first and last names, is a porn performer), but the analogy she draws between the differing views about regulating porn and smoking for the benefit of consumers and citizens still inspired a brain-flash for an idea I believe will do real and lasting good for the Golden State.

Voters and residents of California, with a little fiddling, I think your state can kill two threatening, addictive and highly sinful birds with a single stone — and you won’t even need David’s legendary slingshot to slay the twin Goliaths.

In her column, Satel asserted California’s “interest in protecting the health of pornographic actors is offset by its woefully unenlightened — even damaging — approach to reducing harm to smokers.”

“Enter Proposition 56 … which seeks to increase the tax on electronic cigarettes and vaping products,” Satel continued. “Beyond a $2 per pack tax on cigarettes, the state proposes an ‘equivalent increase [in tax] on other tobacco products and electronic cigarettes containing nicotine.’”

To Satel, these changes will only discourage people from switching over to something called “vaping” which I assume involves volunteering to be sexually assaulted by vampires as a means to quit smoking cigarettes. Clearly one of those progressive sickos for whom anything goes, sexually speaking, so long as the magic word “consent” is involved, Satel apparently believes it’s better to be violated by mystical, undead (and probably Satanic) creatures than to risk getting lung cancer from smoking tobacco.

While Satel’s concern for the wellbeing of smokers is laudable, her monomaniacal obsession with smoking as a risk factor clearly has clouded her judgement. Not only does she advocate for smokers being aggressively fondled by Count Dracula, but she’s even encouraging them to get involved in the worst forms of pornography ever conceived.

“The relative safety of vaping and … snuff (whose modern versions pose a reassuringly low risk of mouth and throat cancer), and even the nicotine medications like gum or lozenge, reside in the fact that no tobacco is burned,” Satel claimed in her column.

While I suppose it’s reassuring to hear making snuff films poses “a reassuringly low risk of mouth and throat cancer,” I’d say that fact is cold comfort for the performers murdered in the making of snuff films. Who, I wonder, ever claimed making snuff gives you throat cancer in the first place? Sounds like nothing but a typical liberal straw man argument to me.

Still, no matter how wrong she may be about snuff films, vampires and throat cancer, I think in unifying the subjects of smoking, taxes, law and pornography Satel accidentally has landed upon a regulatory concept that could enable California to quickly, efficiently and significantly reduce both porn production and smoking in the state.

I hereby propose retooling and rolling together Propositions 56 and 60 such that from now on, if you want to smoke within California’s borders, you must first perform in porn — where, since you will almost certainly foolishly choose to have sex without using condoms, you will be sued into oblivion by all those California non-smokers who always had it in for you to begin with.

At the same time, instead of a $2-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes, the state can establish a $2-per-second-per-viewer tax on porn video streaming, to be paid for by a combination of the site from which the video is streamed, the studio that originally produced the video and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

This legislative combo-concept, which I call “Prop 5660,” is not just a great idea. It’s the one and only thing that can save the entire population of California from gradually becoming nicotine-addicted porn stars riddled with dozens of sexually transmitted diseases.

Doubtlessly some will argue the idea is “unfair” or “impractical” or “clearly dreamed up by a bag-lady on crack,” but I believe it has serious merit. Think about it: If you knew that, going forward, smoking a cigarette in California meant being penetrated anally on film by someone with a nine-inch penis and being sued for tens of thousands of dollars, why wouldn’t you quit smoking?

Similarly, if you’re in the porn industry, why would you keep making films if instead of earning profits from doing so, you find yourself bankrupt within 45 minutes of the next time someone pirates one of your videos and sticks it on a tube site?

I’m sure other critics will say forcing Zuckerberg to shoulder some of the burden of paying for all those minutes of streamed porn is “arbitrary” or “punitive” or even “completely, totally, unarguably unconstitutional,” but those people can (metaphorically only!) kiss my proud, impossibly-tight Christian fanny, quite frankly.

First, Zuckerberg has long been a major enabler of the porn industry, by virtue of the fact he founded a company that has something to do with computers or the internet or electronic stuff of some kind. All of those have helped pornography grow from a threat merely to Times Square property values into a threat to the continued existence of humanity.

Second, Zuckerberg lives in California, so clearly he’d be subject to my proposed statute. Third, he’s worth like $50 billion, so it’s not as though he doesn’t have the money. Fourth… Well, just look at him. Doesn’t that face scream “I’m a liberal who doesn’t deserve to have all this money”?

Let’s stop all this silly fighting over “porn czars,” rapacious vampires and taxes on cigarettes and do something that makes sense for a change: Once it officially exists, vote YES on Proposition 5660!

Prudence Beecher is a devout Christian, mother of seven, needlework expert and anti-pornography activist from Anniston, Alabama. She is also the author of several fine e-books, including The World Is Round and Other Progressive Lies and If Mark Cuban is So Rich, Why the $7 Haircut?