A modified version of a Republican-backed bill to regulate “adult-oriented businesses” and performances, such as adult video stores and adult cabaret, won approval from the Senate on Wednesday.

Senate Bill 147 from Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, would dictate that “adult entertainment” businesses, as well as commercial use locations hosting “performances with explicitly sexual conduct,” cannot do so within 933 feet of certain locations where children might be.

That distance is the average length of a city block, Tichenor has said, and the businesses targeted by the bill include adult arcades, video stores, theater and adult cabaret.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Tichenor said adult businesses “present a wide variety of adverse secondary effects, including an increase in crime, human trafficking, prostitution, lewdness, public indecency, vulgarity, weakening of public morality, obscenity, drug use . . . and the general erosion of communities” and her bill would “guard against” these impacts.

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Such businesses must operate with a 933-foot buffer from places of worship, parks, schools, child-care centers, libraries, seminaries, and play facilities to, as the bill notes, “ensure that minors are not subjected to adult entertainment.”

The Senate voted 32-6 to advance the bill. It now heads to a House committee.

In earlier iterations of the bill, “drag performances” were included in the list of restricted adult entertainment, first referred to as “sexually explicit drag performances” then as a “drag performance with explicitly sexual conduct.”

Though the latest version of the bill no longer includes the word “drag,” it still includes definitions of drag as examples of what would be outlawed: Any performer who is “caricatured” and “exhibits an exaggerated gender expression that is inconsistent with the biological sex of the performer” by using “clothing, makeup, or other physical markers” in such a way that can be considered “explicitly sexual” would be restricted under the bill.

Another approved amendment from Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe, R-Lexington, would allow commercial establishments that were “legally operating as an adult-oriented business” before the bill theoretically takes effect, “may continue operating as an adult-oriented business,” even if it’s in a location that doesn’t conform to the new regulations.

These new parameters would only apply to new businesses. Previously, pre-existing businesses would’ve have five years to comply.

Last week in a legislative committee, Tichenor said she tried to clarify in her definitions of drag after meeting with Louisville’s Andrew Newton Schaftlein, who also performs as May O’Nays, a “Martha Stewart-type” who often performs in family-friendly spaces with children.

Schaftlein publicly asked to meet with the bill sponsor, in part to explain the nuance of drag that wasn’t reflected in the original version of the bills, he told the Herald-Leader. Conflating all drag shows with other adult-oriented performances as “somehow lacking moral clarity” is bothersome, Schaftlein said.

But opponents of the bill continue to point to its legal cloudiness around drag, in particular, and what’s considered sexually explicit.

While everyone agrees sexually explicit conduct or activity be kept out of reach for children, Louisville Democratic Sen. David Yates said he takes “issue” with how lawmakers are still “singling out drag.”

Tichenor’s definition of “explicitly sexual conduct” in the realm of drag — though, again, the word has been removed — essentially just refers to what it means to be in drag, which is when gender expression is exaggerated through the use of clothing, affect and makeup.

But in other parts of the bill defining performances and spaces that include “sexual conduct,” it’s referred to as containing “nudity.”

“We took out the word ‘drag,’ but otherwise lay it out,” Yates said. “My concern is that there may be a free speech issue there (and) constitutional violations.”

On a post on the social media platform X.com after the Senate vote, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky hinted at these violations, saying, “We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Banning gender expression is unconstitutional.”