Iceland's parliament has banned striptease in the North Atlantic country and barred clubs from making profit from the nudity of employees, Iceland Review reports.

The ban, which takes effect July 1 in the country of 320,00 people, passed without opposition in the parliament last week.

"It is pleasing how fresh the breeze of equality is at Althingi [the Icelandic parliament] these days," said Siv Fridleifsdótttir of the Progressive Party, the bill's first sponsor, according to the newspaper Fréttabladid.

Although stripping had generally been banned in the country, the new law puts out of business those few clubs that had been exempted.

Ásgeir Davídsson who runs the strip club Goldfinger in Kópavogur tells the newspaper that the ban reminds him of some countries where almost no part of a woman's body is allowed to be seen in public.

One of the main factors in the debate over the bill was concern that some women who work at strip clubs are victims of human trafficking and other crimes, Iceland Review reported in an earlier story.

(Posted by Doug Stanglin)