A bill proposed by a Mississippi lawmaker to ban restaurants from serving food to obese customers has no chance of being approved – but this was never the lawmaker’s goal in the first place.

Republican Rep. John Read of Gautier filed a bill asking that it be illegal for restaurants with more than five seats to serve people who are obese, the criteria for obesity being set by the state Department of Health. Restaurants that failed to abide by the new law would have their permits revoked.

The Jackson Clarion Ledger reports on its website that the bill has no chance to become law, as House Public Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Steve Holland declared the bill “dead on arrival at my desk.”

“While I appreciate the efforts of my fellow House members to help curb the obesity problem in Mississippi, this is totally the wrong approach,” Holland said in a news release, echoing the thoughts of numerous advocacy groups, indignant restaurant owners and customers alike.

Read told the Associated Press Monday that he never expected his proposition to become law – he only aspired to draw attention to a pervasive health problem in Mississippi.

“I was trying to shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi,” he was quoted by the wire agency as saying.

The Trust for America's Health, a research group that focuses on disease prevention, released a report in 2007 according to which more than 30 percent of adults in Mississippi are considered obese.

Several advocacy groups have already reacted, such as the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. The self-described “nonprofit human rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people” issued a news release Monday calling the bill “a clear and shameless violation of (Mississippians') human and civil rights,” the Clarion Ledger reports.

The AP quotes a restaurant owner in Jackson, Al Stamps, explaining that people are free to make their own choices and cannot have lifestyle decisions imposed on them. “There is a better way to deal with health issues than to impose those kind of regulations,” Stamps said. “I'm sorry — you can't do it by treating adults like children and telling them what they can and cannot eat.”