From: midkiff@public.BTR.COM (Neil Midkiff  midkiff@public.btr.com)
Newsgroups: rec.nude
Subject: Re: Nudity in California
Date: 15 Dec 92 12:41:07 GMT
Organization: BTR Public Access UNIX, MtnView CA. For info contact: info@BTR.COM

In article <> agr00@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Anthony G Rose) writes:
>In article <>  dza@unixland.natick.ma.us (David Archer) writes:
>>
>>My real question, though, concerns the legality of Nudity in 
>>California.  Is it *really* legal to walk around buck naked on
>>city streets, college campuses, etc?  If it is, then why the
>>comments about "got away with", or "weren't apprehended"?  And I
>>wonder why people haven't been going naked all along?
>
>It is not legal to be naked in California.  It is illegal just like
>most other places.  However, there are some privately owned beaches
>that people go to and are naked there.  These nude beaches are not
>hard to find or anything.  In fact, you can buy books with maps as
>to how to find them.
>
>The deal with the naked guy is that he is in Berkeley, which is a radical
>college town. I am not sure how they "get away with it".

This is not the whole story.  In fact it's not even mostly accurate.  For
one thing, most of the nude beaches are on public property.  Even more
important, under some circumstances it *is* legal to be naked.

The relevant California law is (if memory serves) sec. 314.1 of the Penal
Code, on Indecent Exposure.  The gist of it (once again from memory) is
"Every person who, willfully and lewdly, exposes his person, or the
private parts thereof, in any public place, is guilty of a misdemeanor."

The kicker is that in 1972 the California Supreme Court ruled (in re Smith)
that mere nudity is not in itself lewd under this statute.  The test case
involved Chad Merrill Smith, who was sunbathing in the nude on a remote
beach and fell asleep. [NOT a good idea!]  Somebody else came along and
complained, and he was arrested under 314.1.  The court ruled that in the
absence of any specific actions intentionally directing attention to
himself or his genitals for the purposes of shock or gratification, his
conduct was not lewd under the law.  (Once again, a quick summary from
memory.)

Local authorities, for instance Los Angeles County, are free to make local
ordinances prohibiting mere nudity.  In the absence of these, there is
no specific law against nudity in California.

So the question that remains, it seems to me, is how the Smith decision
gets applied to other circumstances.  I can easily imagine a policeman
or prosecutor claiming that just walking down a city street without clothing
is in itself an action specifically designed to shock or offend others.
Whether a court would side that way is an open question as far as I can
tell.  In Berkeley, the prosecutor or district attorney was quoted in
the newspaper as being of the opinion that Andrew Martinez was not doing
anything illegal.  (It seems most of his problems were with the University
administration, not the government authorities, as far as I remember.)

So Anthony's comment about Berkeley being a radical town has some relevance,
but it's with respect to how the law is interpreted, not what the basic
law is.

It will be interesting, when the warm weather returns, to see whether
more people will stretch the boundaries of the social norms.  Certainly
nude beaches are common in California, outside the areas where local law
prohibits them, and the official state park policy is to ignore nudity
unless someone complains about it, then to give the nudist a chance to
dress before citing him.  So in some senses California is pretty liberal
about nudity.  But I'm not sure all jurisdictions will accept what Andrew
has been doing in Berkeley; in fact I'm sure many localities won't accept 
it soon.

But it does give one hope for the day when a naked person isn't seen
as a threat or a danger.  I will be surprised if nudity around town becomes
common anytime soon (I should say *pleasantly* surprised), but I hope
that much sooner than that it becomes seen as a mere choice of style, 
sort of like dyeing one's hair green, and not as a perversion or a crime.

I can't say that I've ever wished I could be naked while shopping or
going to class.  I've often wished, however, that I didn't have to stay in
my fenced backyard or drive an hour to the coast in order to be naked in
the sun (and yes, I know I'm luckier in this than most).  I've often
wished that swimsuits had never been invented.  I've wished for a lot
of other things, too, but this article is long enough already.... :-)

-Neil

PS: My site has never heard of alt.fan.naked-guy, so I couldn't reply in
that forum.  Could someone relay this message to that group?  Thanks. -N