Big Islanders might need to find new places to do the Lindy Hop or the Jitterbug if a nearly 90-year-old Hawaii County statute is rescinded.
In an effort to remove extraneous and outdated parts of the county code, Hilo Councilwoman Jenn Kagiwada has proposed a repeal of Chapter 6, Article 2, of the county statutes, which regulates “dance halls” to an almost puritanical extent.
“This part of the code was written in 1937, and it hasn’t been updated since,” Kagiwada said. “We want to clean up the code, and this part has some particularly questionable language.”
The offending section of the code requires that “dance halls” — or “any house, hall, building or room used for public dancing, for admission to which fees are charged or collected” — be properly licensed through the Finance Department.
Requirements for such a license, however, seem to place an undue importance on the moral character of women dancing.
In particular, one condition for a license requires that “no female shall be permitted to dance … in any public dance house or hall, until she produces or shows a birth certificate or other documentary proof … that she is over the age of eighteen.”
No similar requirement is made of male dancers.
The code also prohibits “undue familiarity between partners” at a dance, the selling of alcohol at a dance hall, or for any dance hall to employ anyone convicted of any offense involving “immorality, moral turpitude or intoxicating liquor.”
Kagiwada said this artifact of the 1930s was discovered after her son encountered a similarly puritanical prohibition on Oahu. Her son and his girlfriend, both of age, were playing cards at an Oahu bar before being stopped by security, who told them that it is illegal to play cards in an establishment that sells liquor.
“It seems like that’s not true,” Kagiwada said, explaining that she searched state and county laws for such a prohibition and couldn’t find one, but discovered Hawaii County’s dance laws in the process.
If the dance hall laws are repealed, Kagiwada said the impact to the county will be negligible.
“Our finance director (Deanna Sako) told me nobody has been issued any of these licenses for years,” Kagiwada said. “Also, the license fees they would have had to pay to the county are like only one dollar per day.”
Because of the law’s irrelevance, Kagiwada predicted little resistance from the county administration toward the repeal, which will first be discussed at 10:30 a.m. today at a meeting of the County Council’s Committee on Planning, Land Use and Development.
If and when the repeal is complete, Big Island residents eager to go out dancing will have to make do with nightclubs or other venues, none of which are required to evaluate customers’ “moral turpitude.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.