destin, Florida- The Ten Commandments may be eternal, but Destin city ordinances aren’t.

The City Council’s Monday agenda includes an ordinance regulating “sexually oriented businesses” such as strip clubs, topless bars, adult video stores, adult bookstores and “sexual device shops.” The ordinance requires the owner and staff to take out city licenses; prohibits nudity; allows seminudity if performers are at least six feet from the customers; bans alcohol from the premises; and imposes a 2 a.m. closing time.

Destin has a 1986 ordinance which prohibits exposing genitals, buttocks or the female breast “below the top of the areola” in any business “which sells alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises.” After Georgia strip-club owner and Destin property owner Terry Stephenson applied for a business license to provide nude dancing at the Oasis pool hall on Mountain Drive — and filed suit when the city turned him down — the council directed city staff to see if the ordinance conformed to current case law, and update it if necessary.

“Some laws — for example, those which govern billboards – are continuously in flux as a result of case law proceeding or legislative initiative,” Mayor Craig Barker [pictured] told The Log this week. “Therefore it is important to update such ordinances from time to time to be consistent with the latest law of the land.”

Attorney Anthony Garganese, an expert in regulating such businesses, worked with the city on drafting the new ordinance. Courts have found nude dancing is entitled to some degree of First Amendment protection, so the ordinance emphasizes “secondary harm” — the increase in crime some studies show sexually oriented businesses generate — as a reason for regulation.