sxnahm@ubvax.UUCP (Stephen Nahm) (03/28/85)
Last summer I reported the passage of an anti-nudity ordinance in Accomack
County, Virginia, which effectively closed a well established nude beach at
the Federal Wildlife Reserve on Assateague Island. The following report
comes from the Spring edition of The Capital Sun, NCN's newsletter.
Send me mail if you would like the address to which donantions should be
sent to support the legal fight to overturn this ordinance, which is indeed
exeptionally repressive.
Steve Nahm
{amd!cae780 | sun!megatest}!ubvax!sxnahm
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NCN Legal Action Report
by John Kyff
As a Member at Large on NCN's [National Capital Naturists] Board of
Directors and Chairman of our Legal Action Committee, I would like to thank
each of you who has already contributed to the Legal Action Fund. Although
we still have a long way to go to raise the funds to protect our freedom, we
are well on our way. Unfortunately, freedom is not free and the cost of
protecting it is high both in terms of financial resources and personal
sacrifices.
With the coming of spring, many of us are wondering what is happening on the
legal front that may impact use of the traditional clothes optional 3 km
beach on Assateague this summer. It pleases me to report that NCN has
retained the services of a team of experienced Virginia attorneys, John P.
McGeehan of Fairfax and Alan Rosenblum of Alexandria, who are presently
researching and preparing our case. Both attorneys share my optimism and
hope to be in court before the start of the summer season.
The Accomack County, Virginia, anti-nudity ordinance must fall. Regardless
of one's personal opinion concerning naturism or nudism, despite one's
personal religious beliefs or moral convictions regarding the physical body
in which we reside, intelligent, educated, rational people everywhere
recognize this ordinance as a serious threat to the fundamental American
concepts of liberty and justice affecting everyone.
Do not be misled by those who mistakenly or by design refer to this
ordinance as one merely prohibiting nude sunbathing or swimming on federal
park lands on Assateague Island -- itself an action beyond the authority of
any state or county government. No, this is a very broad and sweeping
ordinance. Take note for instance that nude "sunbathing", "swimming", and
"Assateague" appear nowhere in it. Be aware that a "state of nudity" - as
defined in this ordinance - does not mean nudity, the absence of clothing.
To the contrary, in Accomack County nudity "legally" includes the fully
clothed. Wearing or merely encouraging someone else to publicly wear many
of today's common popular fashions is a crime.
This ordinance literally empowers the state to hunt down, seize and imprison
anyone whose appearance does not conform to an arbitrary, capricious and vague
dress standard - a standard and purpose admitted to by the County
Supervisors themselves as based on their religiously inspired moral views.
In Iran, the Ayaullah Khomeini made it a crime for anyone to wear a bikini
and other bathing fashions. Consider that Accomack County has done
likewise, and for exactly the same reason - religion. While very clearly
such tyranny has no place in America, unless all of us are on guard and
willing to stand up for freedom, our bill of rights will soon be meaningless.
What American can accept the premise that freedom may be made contingent upon
*any* possession - an identity card, a piece of land or a piece of cloth? I
am heartened by the knowledge that in every case which has come before the
Supreme Court in which nudity per se has been the sole criteria for
legislative proscription, our Justices have consistently and without
exception rejected such mindless nonsense. And they will again.
Please be generous in your much needed financial support of our fight for
freedom and reason. Tyranny is tyranny no matter who the tyrant or who the
oppressed may be. Armed police, barricades, handcuffs and nightsticks have
no place on the free beaches of America.
--
Steve Nahm
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or
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