By Barbara Shoun
Contributing Writer
JEFFERSON CITY – A proposal to regulate sexually-oriented businesses, which was approved by the Missouri Senate on a 29-2 vote in February, has been assigned to the Small Business Committee of the House of Representatives and is expected to be the subject of committee hearings within the next few weeks.
Senate Bill 586 (SB 586), sponsored by Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee’s Summit and a member of Abundant Life Fellowship in Lee’s Summit, seeks to establish boundaries for businesses that appeal to prurient interests.
Sexually-oriented businesses are currently regulated by cities in which they are established, Bartle said, but not by the state. Any regulation depends on what the cities require.
“We want to make it more difficult for these places to throw off the negative secondary effects,” he explained.
SB 586 was combined with SB 617, sponsored by Sen. Jack Goodman, R-Mt. Vernon, earlier in the session, and incorporates the strongest features of both bills into one unit.
“SB 586 and SB 617 is a great piece of legislation,” said Kerry Messer, lobbyist for the Christian Life Commission of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
“What this bill does is to create a set of tools for regulating sexually-oriented businesses in order to limit and help control the damage they do in a community.”
The legislation lists possible adverse secondary effects of such businesses to include personal and property crimes, prostitution, spread of disease, lewdness, public indecency, obscenity, illicit drug use and trafficking, negative impacts on surrounding properties, urban blight, litter, and sexual assault and exploitation.
With the objective of combating those conditions, the legislation would prohibit sexually-oriented businesses from operating within 1,000 feet of a pre-existing school, house of worship, licensed day care, public library, public park, or residence.
Such businesses would have to be separated by 1,000 feet from other sexually-oriented businesses in order to prevent an unnecessary concentration of similar businesses in one area.
The law would prohibit complete nudity and specify physical and behavioral boundaries for semi-nude employees. It encompasses aspects such as the requirement that employees remain at least six feet away from patrons.
It differentiates between sexually-oriented businesses and art studios in accredited colleges and universities.
Messer deemed the sexually-oriented businesses more offensive than pornography. “Pornography, in general, is a plague on our culture,” he said.
“While it’s disturbing how pervasive it is, in that it’s available electronically in 95 percent of the homes in our country, the sexually-oriented businesses provide – not just the context of viewing porn – but a safe haven for a variety of sexual activities.”
These activities have significant public health implications, are contributing factors to horrendous crimes, contribute to the general corruption of society as a whole, and provide a seemingly innocent opportunity for an individual to engage in sin that devastates lives. These sexually-oriented businesses are the worst offenders of all,” he said.
Rep. Ed Emery, R-Lamar and a member of First Baptist Church, Lamar, has an identical bill, HB 1551, establishing the Community Protection Act. The bill is making its way through the House. A hearing was conducted by the Crime Prevention Committee but the committee has not recommended its approval or disapproval.