The suspension is effective from December 18 through Christmas Day (a week the venue picked in which it has only nonalcohol events) but the coliseum will remain under probation for a year.

The ABC Board took no punitive action against the coliseum in another issue – teen-age girls flashing their breasts at the concert.

“Technically, the spontaneous exercise of nudity is a violation because a permit holder was present on the premises when the nudity occurred,” ABC Board and State Tax Commission Chairman Ed Buelow told the Biloxi/Gulfport Sun Herald. “But it is a judgment call whether the coliseum could or could not do something to stop it.

“Our original thought was they had not acted appropriately to stop it. But after we received their testimony, it appeared they had acted appropriately to the best of their ability to stop that kind of thing from happening.”

Under the probation terms, if the coliseum is cited for another violation, an additional week will be tacked onto whatever other suspension is levied.

The commission has recommended that the venue do a better job of screening acts for material that might violate state liquor laws intended to prevent lewd activity.

In the coliseum’s defense, officials argued that as a public facility, the venue isn’t in the business of making moral judgements about the content of shows by acts that want to play there. They also pointed to a landmark decision against the city of Mobile, Ala., which tried to prevent the rock musical “Hair” from being performed.

Coliseum executive director Bill Holmes said his staff will make complying with the law a priority, though doing so without infringing upon First Amendment rights could be quite a balancing act.

“You’re talking about freedom of expression and speech, and there’s rights,” Holmes told POLLSTAR. “We’ve been in business for 25 years and seen it all and never had a problem.”

He said the suspension was based on a regulation that is 30 years old. “That regulation was written prior to public assembly facilities such as ours – coliseums, arenas and the like – came into being.” Venue officials will meet with legislators to address the issue and hopefully update regulations.

The case was being watched closely by others in the concert business last week.

Michigan’s Palace of Auburn Hills recently ended months of hassles with a similar state agency by agreeing to pay a small fine for refusing to censor a graphic video shown as part of an Up In Smoke concert in July. The Palace could have had its license temporarily suspended, as well.

One suggested solution to the problem would be to stop selling liquor at youth-oriented shows. But alcohol sales accounted for almost 10 percent of the revenue that the Biloxi venue took in last year, according to The Sun Herald.

This isn’t the first time the Mississippi Coast Coliseum has dealt with controversy. The arena caught community flak for refusing to bar shockmaster Marilyn Manson in 1997 and for booking Black Springbreak 2000 earlier this year.