Andrew; Move to the UK!

[loCAtek]

I don't find you depressing Dales

[Andrew D]

Nice to see someone in law enforcement get it exactly right....

As we all know, that has yet to happen with respect to Stephen Gough. But if it ever does, please do let us know.

[Andrew D]

He said: 'I just want to be treated like anybody else.'

You are, you thick twat.

Big fan of miscegenation laws, are you?

[Sean]

What the hell has this bell-end who wants to wave his about got to do with miscegenation?

[Gob]

It's that whole big "nude rambler / miscegenation" connection thing, it's staring you in the face mate, obvious really.

[Sean]

Boll?

[Gob]

ocks!

[Sean]

I suppose it's a bit like that whole rabbits - tennis connection.

[Gob]

Pete Sampras, he's one. It's just like a huge rabbit rock festival.

[Sue U]

Andrew can certainly speak for himself, but I take his point to be that anti-nudity laws, like anti-miscegenation laws, are based on nothing but the perception of public taste rather than serving any utilitarian function to promote an orderly society. In both cases, it's a matter of "we don't like to see that in public."

[Andrew D]

Perhaps a better analogy* comes from Anatole France:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.

Likewise, the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the nudist as well as the clothing-preferrer from going about in pubic naked.

One might just as well prohibit going about in public with ashes on one's forehead (shades of burka-prohibition): The law, in its majestic equality, would forbid Christians as well as atheists from doing so.

The point is straightforward: The mere fact that those who wish to do something and those who do not wish to do that thing are both prohibited from doing that thing does not demonstrate that they are being treated equally.

* The point of the miscegenation analogy is that, according to the proponents of laws against racially mixed marriages, white and black people were being "treated like anyone else": All people, black and white (and everyone else, but black-white was the primary focus of miscegenation laws) were equally prohibited from marrying outside their races.

The Supreme Court rightly rejected that argument. The freedom at issue was not the freedom to marry outside one's race; it was the freedom to marry whom one chooses to marry. And miscegenation laws violated that freedom.

[Andrew D]

What is sorely lacking from anti-nudity laws is a justification for their existence.

I have seen nothing indicating that the concern here is this man's "bare anus (and whatever pathogens it might be harboring) brushing against [anyone's] chair or the edge of [anyone's] table when [one] might touch either with [one's] hand while eating." Nor have I seen anything indicating that the concern here is this man's "dribbling" anywhere where such "dribbling" might reasonably be considered to be a problem.

What is going on here is that a man is being relentlessy harassed for nothing more than the fact of being naked in public. Nothing more; just the simple fact of public nakedness.

What is the justification for that?

Sue U has nailed it: The only supposed justification for laws prohibiting the mere fact of public nudity is pure tyranny of the majority: "[W]e don't like to see that in public."

And the problem with that supposed justification is, of course, that it is no justification at all.

[dales]

Obnoxious naked old men in the Castro...the so-called "tryranny of the majority" is spot on.

[Andrew D]

If you are trying to demonstrate the unappealing nature of some naked men, you might start by posting a picture of men who are actually naked.

The man on the left is quite clearly not naked: Even a casual observer can readily perceive that he is wearing shorts (of a shade of green at least arguably even less appealing than his nakedness might be).

Whether the man on the right is naked is not apparent from the photograph. The strategically placed chair makes his nakedness or clothedness undeterminable.

[Andrew D]

But to the point: Who made you the arbiter of what is sufficiently offensive to justify prohibiting its public display?

Who made the majority that arbiter? Well, of course, the majority -- in an act of self-aggrandizement which has yet to be justified -- made itself that arbiter.

But why should anyone be bound by that unjustified decision?

We permit people to go about in public wearing Nazi swastikas. Is a penis or a vulva or a woman's nipple more offensive than that?

We permit people to go about in public carrying signs reading "Send Blackie back to Africa!" Is a penis or a vulva or a woman's nipple more offensive than that?

Etc.

I specify "woman's nipple" because of a purely sexist rule that no one has even attempted to justify -- due, no doubt, to the total absence of a justification for it. I have posed the question before, and I will pose it again:

Why is it permissible for a man to walk down the street with his nipples exposed but impermissible for a woman to do the very same thing?

The majoritarians/authoritarians who support anti-nudity laws have no answer to that question. At least, no answer which they are willing to state publicly.

Why? Because their answer to that question would reveal the truth: The only (pseudo)justification for anti-nudity laws is a puerile prudishness.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I believe woman can go topless in NY (at least in the city IIRC).

[Scooter]

Why is it permissible for a man to walk down the street with his nipples exposed but impermissible for a woman to do the very same thing?

In Canada at least, such a distinction is no longer made - see R. v. Jacob. While strictly speaking the ruling applies only in Ontario, other provinces have taken the hint and have not attempted to charge topless women under the Criminal Code, probably anticipating a similar result.

[Gob]

Maybe Andrew should move to the UK, it's permissible for women to to walk down the street with her nipples exposed there, as it is in most of Europe and Aus..

But the fact that he tries, and fails, to equate this with anti-miscegenation laws, (again, not a UK phenomena,) shows how daft he is.

[Sean]

Andrew can certainly speak for himself, but I take his point to be that anti-nudity laws, like anti-miscegenation laws, are based on nothing but the perception of public taste rather than serving any utilitarian function to promote an orderly society. In both cases, it's a matter of "we don't like to see that in public."

But he is suggesting that if Gob agrees with one law then he must be a "big fan" of another, entirely seperate law.

That in itself is both ludicrous and a sure sign of a weak/non-existent argument.

[Gob]

Nicely put Sean, I believe the term for it is "a strawman" or the use of "false equivalence".