In effect, sex-oriented businesses would be banned from even heavily commercial areas and be pushed to the city's industrial fringes.

But that support could erode if, to make the plan constitutionally safer, it is revised to allow sex-oriented businesses in mixed-use areas.

They are right to do so because the Mayor's strategy of regulating the location and concentration of sex-oriented adult businesses is sound.

A City Council committee has approved amendments to part of the city's 1995 zoning law governing sex-oriented businesses.

After years of litigation, city regulations for sex-oriented businesses took effect in December, requiring three feet between dancers and patrons.

As erotic dancing became the summer's cause celebre, half a dozen other mountain communities raced to pass ordinances keeping out sex-oriented businesses.

Provisions of the law forbid sex-oriented businesses within 500 feet of residential zones, schools, churches or day care centers.

Another sex-oriented businesses called the Love Shack, an adult video and magazine store, had opened across the street a few weeks earlier.

The Mayor also proposed an immediate moratorium on the opening of new sex-oriented businesses anywhere in the city while his proposals are considered.

He helped draft the city's zoning rules for sex-oriented businesses, incorporating his concern that they not infringe on the constitutional rights of homosexuals.