The House State Affairs Committee this morning barely approved legislation designed to settle a lawsuit by writing an exemption into the state’s laws banning nudity and explicit live performances at places licensed to serve alcohol for “any theatrical or artistic performance which, when considered as a whole and in the context that it is used, expresses matters of serious literary, artistic, scientific or political value,” sending it to the full House on a close 8-6 vote. The exemption also would require that those performances be held at a theater, concert hall, art center, museum, event center or other location that’s not mainly in the business of explicit live adult entertainment.

The bill, SB 1144, earlier cleared the Senate State Affairs Committee unanimously and passed the Senate, 32-2.

The language in the bill, as in existing law, includes explicit descriptions of which body parts may or may not be exposed and which acts may not be depicted. House State Affairs Chairman Tom Loertscher, R-Iona, asked the committee’s teenage pages and a group of visiting high school students to leave before the discussion of the bill, saying he thought they shouldn’t be there for it.