The DeKalb City Council relayed an embarrassing message Monday night when it banned tattooing in the city without any valid reasons to back up this ludicrous decision.

After granting Craig Murphy a permit to open a tattoo parlor on Lincoln Highway, the council decided the practice is a health risk and are giving Murphy another eight days to shut down his business before it officially becomes illegal.

One’s immediate response to this decision logically is, “Well, for the council to take such a stand by challenging the U.S. Constitution, the members must have a darn good reason, right?”

Wrong. The only reason the council is standing on is the potential health threat from unsanitary tattooing.

Fifth Ward Ald. Bessie Chronopoulos even had the audacity to say, “If someone dies because of this, it’s on my shoulders.”

Please, Bessie, give your constituents and the rest of this community credit for having just a little bit of intelligence.

Fear of someone dying because they got a tattoo cannot possibly be the true reason for pushing a legitimate business person right out of town.

Anyone could walk out of a local bar drunk and get hit by a car. Yet, you certainly don’t see any aldermen scrambling to save these drunken bar patrons from their own indiscretions.

Perhaps this has something to do with the amount of money local bars bring into DeKalb every year. It seems when a solid chunk of change is involved, the save-the-city morality can be overlooked.

And it should be. If someone wants to go to a bar on Friday night, he certainly should be able to. In the same respect, if someone wants to get a tattoo, the city council has no legitimate reason for preventing it.

The five council members who voted down tattooing obviously have some negative bias toward the industry. That should not give them the power, however, to determine whether a DeKalb citizen has the right to get a tattoo.

Perhaps the council members simply feel a tattoo parlor would cheapen the quality of the town’s main drag and are trying to hide this prejudice behind the guise of health concerns.

But this argument just doesn’t fly. If Murphy wants to operate a parlor in DeKalb and he has met all city regulations for opening a business, he should not be given a license and then have it taken away because of council members’ personal problems with the tattooing industry.

Although city councils do it every day, they have no business challenging a businessman’s constitutional rights. Murphy should continue to press the issue as he is so the council can be told it has no right to ban tattoo parlors because the members don’t like tattoos.

The excuse that there is a possibility someone will die from tattooing is absurd. Council members who used this as their main ammunition and justification to ban tattooing should come out of the dark ages.

If the aldermen really believe this, they better dig up some hard-hitting and current evidence to support it.

Either way, the council should recognize the grave mistake it’s made and let the man continue running his business.