anything with mutual friends

I don’t have any of those

Hence the goal here of expanding friend network with people who actually have time and shared interests.

Illegal in the South for the same reasons that you can’t buy beer on Sunday morning.

That's incredibly stupid... Then again, my area also restricts buying beer on Sundays.

100% of them are for ages 6-12 or 65+

Maybe try the nearest big city? Or maybe the next closest one?

local business

I mean bigger companies, companies that are looking to hire people, not sell you stuff. For example, I'm in tech, and most of the companies that host events are just looking to attract applicants in whatever their tech stack is, their target market is something entirely different (e.g. they're B2B).

I'm not talking about things like sewing classes at the local crafting store, though if you're going to buy from them anyway, I guess I don't see the harm.

And yeah, the meetups I've attended are largely male dominated (that's the nature of my interests). But that's 100% okay because the goal is to find people with share interests, not find a romantic partner. Finding a romantic partner should come naturally from making friends. Friend may introduce you to a romantic partner, or they could become one. If you're making finding romance the goal, you're going to get burned by abusive partners because they're attracted to such platforms as well.

So that's my advice. If your friends are all married and boring (I'm now one of those), make new ones. That's hard, I know, but it's a lot safer to do that than try to hook up on dating services IMO.