Feb 23, 2015 5:15 PM PST    Text size: 

TOPEKA, Kan. — A Kansas bill that would establish new rules where strip clubs and DVD and sex toy and novelty stores could be located was criticized by the Topeka Capital-Journal in an editorial last week.

Senate Bill 147 would initiate statewide zoning limiting where sexually oriented video stores, sexual device stores, adult arcades and strip clubs could be located.

Some of the main restrictions would forbid new sex toys and novelty stores and strip clubs from operating within 1,000 feet of schools, day cares, churches or libraries and prohibit the sale of alcohol.

The stores and clubs would be mandated to close at midnight with the bill, and operators would be forced to go through background checks to see if they have been “convicted of certain criminal activities that are specified in the bill.”

Groups such as the American Families Association of Kansas and Missouri have tried twice to pass this bill in Kansas and both times it's failed.

Editors as the Topeka Capital-Journal, however, are staunchly against the new bill

The businesses “serve a population, employ people and pay taxes. If there were no demand for them they would go out of business,” the editors said.

“Legislators have better things to do than pander to people who want their own moral outrage placed in the statute books.”