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Spending
a day at the beach without clothes can be one of life's
most exhilarating experiences. In many European
countries, it is accepted as normal human behavior
to enjoy the sand and water in the nude if one so
chooses. Women are often free to go topless
wherever men are, and there is a genuine understanding
that the human body is a form of beauty, not
something that should be covered up because it is
somehow dirty.
We believe
that all people have a constitutionally guaranteed
freedom to express themselves in the nude in
public areas like beaches, parks, neighborhood streets,
and lawns. Public nudity should be decriminalized
so that people may dress - or not dress - as
they so choose.
Questions
and Answers
What
is nudism?
Nudism is
the state of being nude, especially in public
places.
Is
nudism sexual?
It can
be, but it usually isn't. Most nudists want to be nude
merely because they feel more comfortable and more
natural when they are not wearing clothes. Laws that ban
nudity in public essentially make it against the law to
be yourself.
Where
is nudism legal?
Nudism is
generally legal only on private property that is not in
view of the general public. A small number of public
beaches and parks in America also "tolerate"
nudism in certain restricted areas, but in most cases a
person can still be ticketed or even arrested for being
nude in those areas at any time. Police crackdowns also
periodically occur in nude areas when authorities
receive one or more complaints from the public about
"indecent exposure".
Why
is public nudism illegal?
Like
laws regulating other aspects of sexuality, nudism
laws are remnants of rigid religious and moral codes
that do not belong in today's world.
What
needs to be done?
Either
Congress must pass a human rights law decriminalizing nudity
in public, or the Supreme Court needs to issue a ruling
declaring that laws banning public nudity are
unconstitutional because they violate a person's right
to free expression, and that laws banning toplessness
for women but not men violate the equal protection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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