Dixmont, ME Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

The Town of Dixmont regulates adult entertainment through one stand-alone ordinance, the Ordinance Controlling Nudity in Business, posted with the town's other ordinances on the Planning Board page. It does not license sexually oriented businesses and prints no spacing distances. It prohibits the conduct itself. Section 1 states the purpose: to regulate nudity as a form of commercial exploitation and to regulate dress as a form of conduct, and not to impede the free exchange and expression of ideas.

Section 2 supplies the definitions. A business is any activity engaged in with the object and purpose of economic gain, benefit or advantage, either direct or indirect. To expose means unclothed or uncostumed or not covered by a fully opaque material. A person counts as a sales person, waiter, waitress or entertainer if the person acts in that capacity, whether or not the owner or management pays any compensation.

Section 3(A) makes it unlawful for a person acting as a sales person, waiter, waitress, entertainer or in any other capacity as an owner, manager, employee, or independent contractor in a business conducted or operated within the Town of Dixmont to expose genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, perineum, or anus, to expose any portion of the female breast at or below the areola, or to display covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state. Section 3(B) reaches the people behind the performer: it is unlawful to cause, permit, procure, counsel, or assist any person to expose or display as Section 3(A) prohibits.

Section 4 lists two exceptions. The ordinance does not apply to a theater or similar establishment primarily devoted to theatrical performances or the presentation of movies, or to any act authorized or prohibited by any statute of the State of Maine. Section 2(D) defines a theatre as a building with a permanent stage and permanently affixed seats, a movie house with a permanent screen and fixed seating, or an open-air or drive-in movie with a permanently affixed screen.

The ordinance names no individual officer. Section 5 leaves enforcement to the Town, which can sue to enjoin or abate a violation, and Section 1 records the finding of the community and the Board of Selectmen that the regulated conduct is offensive to the general welfare, public safety, order and morals of the town. Section 6 keeps the remainder in force if a court strikes any part.