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April 08, 2006
Stephen Gough Jailed
Filed under Naturism-Nudism | permalink | April 8, 2006 at 12:20 PM
Comments
In England the courts have largely been tolerant of nude court appearances. There have been quite a few, mainly by Vincent Bethell and Steve Gough. It didn't upset the jury, they acquitted him. Likewise most if not all cases before a magistrate.
Scotland's legal system and laws are very different from those of England. The Scots have real problems over the human body and that does have the expected result. The Scottish teenage pregnancy rates and such like are very nearly as bad as those of the USA - the worst in the western world.
Posted by: Malcolm Boura at Oct 26, 2008 2:43:01 PM
A middle-aged carpenter in Berkeley, CA was charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure recently after a client returned home early and found him working naked under the house. The carpenter, evidently feeling a need to justify his state of undress, referred to improved range of motion and unsoiled clothing.
The carpenter was evidently not trespassing and one might wonder if the contract/agreement expressly prohibited working in the nude.
The homeowner reduced the carpenter's pay by $200 to cover new door locks.
Posted by: at Apr 22, 2006 3:16:54 PM
Sorry--bad writing.
"We" would be the lawmakers/influential public in most areas of the country in the first sentence, and the general public in the second sentence.
Actually, I got the idea about distorted sense of "public" from reading Paul Wakfer, a former math professor, an extreme libertarian, and a student of nutrition/biochemistry (see his "Morelife" website). Paul would like to see the entire country gradually converted mainly to myriad private land ownerships where the landowner would determine dress code--not a government (although he has no personal interest in naturism, to my knowledge). Then, the public areas would be minimal. His website includes his libertarian rewriting of the US Constitution.
(Paul was formerly aka Tom Matthews, the forum moderator for LEF for a few years.)
Posted by: at Apr 10, 2006 6:19:09 PM
Who is this "we?"
Posted by: Ron's Log at Apr 9, 2006 9:06:17 PM
Gould seems to have been sentenced based on his naked court appearance and not his outdoor ramblings. In the US, UK, and Canada, judges seem not to tolerate nude court appearances.
Vincent Bethel is another prominent UK naturist activist. You can see pictures of him in *N* magazine seated atop a city lamp post with a London Bobby looking up from below. When he visited the US, he claimed that American naturists could very easily attain complete body freedom—they just needed to assert themselves (details were not provided).
We might have an inverted understanding of "public", as in public nudity. We may have no actual public areas, especially urban, because in a truly public area, it would seem that the individual could do as he chose, as long as he did no harm to others and did not commit fraud.
Posted by: at Apr 9, 2006 6:03:33 PM
