Nudity ban in San Francisco

Because we just can't help it.
You know - because we were born this way.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NUDITY_BAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-11-18-15-45-34

Nov 19, 12:44 AM EST

Public nudity ban eyed in fed-up San Francisco

LISA LEFF
ASSOCIATED PRESS


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- San Francisco may be getting ready to shed its image as a city where anything goes, including clothing.
City lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would prohibit nudity in most public places, a blanket ban that represents an escalation of a two-year tiff between a devoted group of men who strut their stuff through the city's famously gay Castro District and the supervisor who represents the area.
Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal would make it illegal for a person over the age of 5 to "expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet or plaza" or while using public transit.
A first offense would carry a maximum penalty of a $100 fine, but prosecutors would have authority to charge a third violation as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine and a year in jail. Exemptions would be made for participants at permitted street fairs and parades, such as the city's annual gay pride event and the Folsom Street Fair, which celebrates sadomasochism and other sexual subcultures.
Wiener said he resisted introducing the ordinance, but felt compelled to act after constituents complained about the naked men who gather in a small Castro plaza most days and sometimes walk the streets au naturel. He persuaded his colleagues last year to pass a law requiring a cloth to be placed between public seating and bare rears, yet the complaints have continued.
"I don't think having some guys taking their clothes off and hanging out seven days a week at Castro and Market Street is really what San Francisco is about. I think it's a caricature of what San Francisco is about," Wiener said.
The proposed ban predictably has produced outrage, as well as a lawsuit. Last week, about two dozen people disrobed in front of City Hall and marched around the block to the amusement of gawking tourists and high school students on a field trip.
Stripped down to his sunglasses and hiking boots, McCray Winpsett, 37, said he understands the disgust of residents who would prefer not to see the body modifications and sex enhancement devices sported by some of the Castro nudists. But he thinks Wiener's prohibition goes too far in undermining a tradition "that keeps San Francisco weird."
"A few lewd exhibitionists are really ruining it for the rest of us," he said. "It's my time to come out now to present myself in a light and show what true nudity is all about so people can separate the difference between what a nudist is and an exhibitionist is."

Gays Against Nudity

Quote :

Ever since gay marriage became a plausible idea, opponents have predicted it would unravel society. There’d be runaway polygamy, bestiality, and public nudity. In 2008, as Californians debated a gay-marriage ballot measure, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality said it was “no coincidence that the man who took it upon himself four years ago to illegally and radically redefine marriage,” then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, was promoting an event featuring “rampant public nudity.” This year, the Family Policy Institute of Washington warned that Referendum 74, which proposed to legalizing same-sex marriage in Washington state, would “make marriage genderless” and lead to men using women’s locker rooms. The National Organization for Marriage, capitalizing on a nudist’s stunt, ran the headline: “The ‘Naked Cowboy’ Comes Out for Gay Marriage.” The Iowa Republican depicted same-sex marriage as a gateway to nudity, incest, and necrophilia.

The predictions haven’t panned out. Instead, gays have drawn a line. While voters in Washington and three other states endorsed same-sex marriage this month, residents of San Francisco’s Castro district, possibly the most gay-friendly place on Earth, persuaded the city’s board of supervisors to pass an ordinance restricting public nudity. The rise of same-sex households isn’t making society queer. It’s making gay people bourgeois.

. . .

The offended bystanders—most notably, gay men—asked the district’s representative, Supervisor Scott Wiener, to stop the naked guys. Last week, Wiener persuaded his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors to pass an ordinance making it illegal for anyone to "expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet or plaza.”

The proposed ban outraged nudists and libertarians. Many of them showed up at the board’s Nov. 5 and Nov. 20 meetings to charge Wiener with attacking free expression and trying to “Peoria-ize San Francisco.” They borrowed the rhetoric of the gay marriage movement, preaching “freedom,” “diversity,” “acceptance,” and “civil rights.” They accused the ban’s proponents of “hate,” “bigotry,” “shame,” “intolerance,” “fascism,” “dehumanization,” and “a war on gay men.” They said making people wear clothes was like making women wear burqas. They compared opponents of nudity to segregationists and Nazis.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have heard this language before. But this time, the libertarians weren’t up against the Christian right. They were up against the gay mainstream.

If you want to know what the gay mainstream looks like, watch the hearings, which the board of supervisors has posted online.

. . .

If you read the gay press and comments from longtime activists, you’ll see similar expressions of support for the ordinance. It hasn’t become law yet, and none of the witnesses who testified for it have legal recognition from the state for their same-sex marriages. But these people are the future of gay America. For them, being a husband, mom, uncle, or resident isn’t about tearing down the community. It’s about protecting it.