It is sad when teenagers or young adults sell their bodies for lewd services — whether to feed children, pay bills or afford an education. It’s how economic despair can diminish human lives.

So, imagine a town government enticing young people to exploit their bodies for the sake of funding government and private profiteers. That’s exactly what could happen if politicians transform Colorado’s iconic, wholesome village of Central City into a red-light district of strippers, prostitutes and adults who pay for sex.

Incredibly, Central City Mayor Jeremy Fey — son of legendary Colorado concert promoter Barry Fey — wants that. The mayor proposes reducing regulation of sexually oriented businesses to facilitate a large, out-of-state sex corporation that flew him to Houston and promised riches for the town.

The proposal would prostitute Central City — which can no longer afford a police department — in a move of financial desperation. It would take the town back to the Wild West, when brothels lined the streets of Colorado’s lawless gold rush towns.

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Fey wants to reduce the town’s buffer — protecting gathering places and residences from sexually oriented businesses — from 1,000 feet to 150 feet. This would allow nude clubs near almost any property, including churches.

No one would be far from a sex business and associated activities, given the town’s size of 779 residences sharing 2.1 square miles. In a casino community that small, even one or two sex joints could unleash Colorado’s version of a micro-Amsterdam.

It doesn’t stop there. In addition to wiping out the buffer zone — intended to keep such businesses away — Fey wants adult arcades and peep shows, in which customers pay money for private showings of nude sex workers. His proposal would allow adult cabarets, sex theaters and a “sexual encounter center.”

The plan would allow hotels with 10-hour stays. Gosh, what’s that about?

Townspeople packed a Central City Council meeting on May 21 to blast the proposition for obvious reasons. The Council has a meeting scheduled Tuesday, at which opponents should express their outrage again. Strip clubs, sex hotels and such will lower property values, attract out-of-town losers, and make Central City a squalid bowery.

Central City parents, business leaders and other concerned parties should not let their leadership do this. The town needs constructive investments and ideas, not the money of cads leering at and otherwise exploiting desperate sex workers.

Colorado has already become the state known for drug sales and abuse. We’re already the third-most dangerous state, as determined this year by a US News & World Report ranking. We already fall among the top 20 states for human trafficking, often of children — a nightmare Democratic legislators refused to address this session when they killed a bill to increase penalties for adults who have sex with child prostitutes.

Colorado has transformed a globally known brand of health and beauty into one of open-air vice. Given the unwholesome state of our state, we don’t need more hourly-rate hotels and greasy executives exploiting vulnerable young people — mostly young women — for ill-begotten cash. When they pitch this plan to the town, dress them down and send them back to Texas.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board