Tuesday, June 13, 2017

NATURIST AMERICANS UNDER ATTACK

Ever since this world began someone has been trying to better himself by enslaving others. Search all throughout history and you will see this sad story played out time after time after time. Here in America we thought we had finally eradicated slavery when the North and South went to war one American against another over enslaving “colored people,” as they were called back in the 1860s and are now called by the term “African Americans,” because their ancestors derived mostly from the continent of Africa. And yet we found that the same bigotry against these same people persisted in a slightly lesser form of discrimination throughout many states of the Union that caused people of the African descent to be treated as less than second-class citizens until leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. rose up to put a stop to it and brought into being the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s.

The truth is, however, that bigotry is far from being eradicated in the United States of America, as can easily be discovered by perusing the municipal codes of nearly any city within these United States to see which minority is currently being targeted by the so-called “laws” governing the cities within which we live. This minority, the one that has existed far longer than any other within history, began at the beginning of history with the advent of the first human being and transcends racial and gender lines. Whether you believe in the story of Creation as told within the pages of the Bible or you believe that humanity evolved from a single celled organism that somehow managed to replicate itself and grow and change until millions and billions of years later what we have now as human beings appeared on the scene to dominate all other species on this planet, either way this species known as Homo Sapiens is each born completely nude and remains that way throughout each individual’s life until after death when the carcass naturally rots and disintegrates into its final molecules. It is this minority, the one that embodies this most natural of existence, this primal state of being that we all are born into, that is being targeted by lawmakers and governing bodies today.

Without provocation, for this group, these Naturist Americans, as they are known, since they eschew the values, the essence of living as they were intended from birth, as proven by the fact of their birth, have certainly done nothing to provoke the laws that have been made to prohibit their most natural way of life, cities, counties, and even many states across the USA have enacted laws under such titles as “Lewd Acts,” or “Indecent Exposure,” and yet there is nothing “lewd” or “indecent” about simple nudity or the human body in its natural nude form, and yet these law makers continue to enact laws that make criminals out of these most innocent of all people. For the simple act of walking outside to check one’s mail or dispose of the garbage a Naturist American can be arrested if someone views the male penis or the female nipple. Never mind the fact that as recently as February 22, 2017, it was reported that U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled in a case involving discrimination concerning women not being able to go topless in Fort Collins, Colorado due to a law stating such, while men are perfectly able to do so under the law, that women now have the same equality to be topless anyplace men are if they so choose. This is now the law in Fort Collins, CO and it needs to be the law in every city.

However we cannot stop at simply freeing the nipple. As noble a cause as that is – and I applaud those who fight for this equality among our sisters that is long overdue – we must fight even harder for our equality in being publicly nude with our entire bodies, for that is the ultimate equality of the body for all of us, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, or anything else you might choose with which to label yourself. As a Naturist American being free to live your life as you were born is the first and foremost, the most singularly most vitally important aspect of equality that we must all fight for and insist upon from the governing bodies that make and uphold the laws under which we live our daily lives. From the city councils to the county councils to each individual state legislature all the way to the United States Congress, we must push this agenda until we have the ear of every politician involved who can affect such change.

We who are Naturist Americans have been silent long enough and we see where it has gotten us! Like sheep being led to the slaughter we have been penned up awaiting our turn to be sheered and slaughtered. Will you sit quietly until it is your turn or will you stand up and make your voice heard? End this onslaught of discrimination. Speak to your city councils about the laws in YOUR city. Tell them what is wrong and ask them to change the laws so that simple public nudity is no longer a crime. Stop the outrage against Naturist Americans! Stop the discrimination against YOU! Every day these laws remain on the books in YOUR city is another day your city deliberately laughs in YOUR face and tells you that YOU are not worthy of being a valid citizen of the city they have been elected to serve. Are you going to stand for that? That is baseless bigotry and it is against the law. It is a violation of YOUR Constitutional and Civil Rights. The 1st Amendment guarantees you the right to make your voice heard. The 14th Amendment guarantees the right of equality to every citizen of the United States. Where is YOUR equality when you cannot walk down the street of your neighborhood the same as everyone else in the manner in which you were born, the manner in which you have the right to exist by right of natural birth? If you get arrested for simply existing, then those laws are in violation of your right to equality and your right to freedom of expression of your equality.

The first step is to research the laws in your city and know what it is your city enslaves you with. Find out what they are using to discriminate against you with. Go to the city council meeting. Tell them how much this means to you and how much it offends you and why it offends you. Tell them how to change this law. Ask them to change this law so it no longer discriminates against Naturist Americans like you. Thank them for listening and then leave it in their hands. Then return at the next meeting and ask them if they have acted on your request to change those laws. Keep fighting until these laws are changed! We must keep placing these laws before the law makers until they have no choice but to do as we ask or be taken to court as was this law in Fort Collins! We cannot back down! If we pause for even a minute the enemy will sense our weakness and we will lose! Push the fight! Keep moving forward! Push even harder until these laws have ALL been eradicated!

American Naturists are under attack. You are under attack. I am under attack. Every one of us is under attack and our bodies are being forced to be hidden beneath coverings we do not want over them. Let the enemy know we will take them to court if they do not change these laws.

Fight and never give up.
Sign our petition to Legalize Body Freedom at: https://tinyurl.com/yajam8l5





Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Changing Hate Laws

Last night I attended the City Council meeting in Tumwater, Washington, which is the city (small town, rather) where I live. My purpose was to speak to them and let them know that as a nudist and representative of Legalize Body Freedom I was not pleased with the wording in the Lewd Act law in the municipal codes governing their city, which means also governing me. I won't go into everything I said, because I'm going to publish the entirety of my speech here for everyone to read. What I am going to do is state that as I read my speech the City Council members were not pleased with what I was saying. I won't speculate as to why they didn't seem to be pleased with my words. I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions once you've read my speech. I will say that the mayor interrupted me before I could finish, obviously not wanting to hear the rest of what I had to say. After all, the truth hurts, and he didn't seem to be the type who wanted to hear about people who want the liberty to "run around naked" within the limits of his city and want him to give them approval to do so. Anyway, what follows is my speech:

My name is Jacob Drake.

I am a resident of Tumwater and have been for many years, and I represent an organization called Legalize Body Freedom.

I have come to you tonight to discuss an issue with portions of the Tumwater city code, specifically:

Chapter 9.06
OFFENSES AGAINST PUBLIC MORALS

9.06.020 Lewd act.
Every person who intentionally performs any lewd act in a public place or at a place and under circumstances where such act could be observed by any member of the public when such act does or is likely to cause reasonable affront and alarm is guilty of a misdemeanor.
9.06.010 Definitions.
For the purpose of this chapter:
A.    “Lewd act” means public:
1.    Exposure of any portion of the human anus or genitals,
2.    Exposure of the female breast lower than the upper edge of the areola; or
3.    Touching, the male or female genitals or female breast, whether clothed or naked;
9.06.030 Limitations.
B.    Whether or not the conduct is obscene shall be judged by consideration of the following factors:
Whether the average person, applying the contemporary community standards, would find:
1.    That the activity appeals to a prurient interest in sex; and
2.    The conduct depicts or describes in a patently offensive way conduct as defined in TMC 9.06.010(A); and
3.    The conduct taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
We have no quarrel with the rest of the codes in these sections, only those portions I quoted, for they make illegal simple nudity and the simple touching of the human body in an innocent manner, something we all do every day. Every man in here, were he to reach down and adjust himself, even clothed, while in public, could be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor, but the point is that we are seeking to legalize public nudity and these laws stand in the way. We would have to admit that in most cities the “community standards” might be against public nudity, although much has changed over the years in most American communities, so that could be questioned. That word “prurient,” however, poses a problem for the lawmakers, because it means:
1 Uneasy with desire; itching; especially, having a lascivious anxiety or propensity; lustful.
2  Arousing or appealing to sexual desire.
3  Curious, especially inappropriately so.
If you were to see me nude out on the street I can guarantee you would not have any desire toward me and certainly not one that was “itching,” or filled you with a “lascivious anxiety or propensity.” And you most certainly would not find within you any lust toward me. Trust me on this. Likewise you would not be aroused by any part of me and not find me appealing. No matter whether you are a woman attracted to men or a man attracted to men, you would not have any sexual desire toward me.
But this isn’t about me or how society might perceive me, it’s about many more people than just me, it’s about millions more people than just me.
I am part of a worldwide movement seeking to right a wrong that has perpetrated itself for far too long. We are those who recognize that the offensive bigotry in anti-body hate speech and law needs to be challenged wherever it is found. Declaring that any human being is inherently "obscene," “lewd,” or "indecent," or similar hate words by a legislative body is very offensive anti-human hate speech. No human of any kind has ever been harmed by seeing another member of his or her own species nude. There are millions of nudists and naturists in America alone and a great percentage of us are no longer content to keep our nudity locked away in our homes, our clubs and resorts, or our beaches. We are forced by the aforementioned hate speech laws to cover ourselves whenever we leave our homes to go shopping, go to restaurants, go to the movies, get gas in our cars, do any of the typical daily tasks that every other American does throughout their lives, which forces us to violate the very core of our beings, that which fills us and gives us our greatest meaning, because we have no other choice. The unfounded bigotry of one part of this nation is forcing itself upon another the same as it did before the Civil Rights Act gave equality to all Americans of African descent and it needs to stop.
You might ask why it is we have only now decided to come out into the open and make our statement, declare that we demand to be free and equal alongside everyone else when nudism has existed within America for some time and certainly people have been born nude for as long as they have existed. There is a season for everything. The 60s were the season for Equality for black people. The 90s were the season for Equality for homosexuals. Now is the time for Equality for Nudists. We have polled our members and decided that we have had enough. It is time to stop the hate! It is time to change these laws! It is time to FREE our bodies and allow US the same rights as all other Americans, to move about in public freely being ourselves without fear of censure, condemnation, and certainly without fear of being arrested.
A question was asked of our membership, “Where is the one place you would love to go naked?” Of course many replied they wanted the freedom to go anywhere and everywhere, but we received a diversity of responses. I would like to read you a few of them, just to show you how intimate they are and how real the desires of these people are to be free of the constraints of clothing and the laws that keep them locked up in ways others can never understand:
My yard
The beach
I would like to just be able to walk the streets of our neighborhood naked any time I wanted.
At a huge water park with lots of amazing slides.
Outside my own home (We got this one a lot)
I would love to be nude everywhere I want to be without being judged or arrested.
And my personal favorite: I want to stand before Congress and address the nation.
Where would I like to be naked if I could? I would like to take my garbage out. Check my mail. Mow my lawn. Walk my neighborhood. Lie in my yard in the sunshine. Work in my garden, all without fear that someone will call the cops and have me arrested, and why? Just because I am someone who was born understanding that the skin we were born in is the best and only presentation of ourselves we will ever need and that covering it stifles me and makes me not merely uncomfortable, but chokes me to the point that I want to claw my eyes out. This is not some mental illness; it’s simply a perfect understanding of who we were meant to be, who we were born as, an inherent refusal to give in to society’s perversion that demands we succumb to peer pressure and cover what is natural, simply because, “everyone else does it”. It is accepting oneself as one is without the need to dress up and pretend to be someone else.
Human beings are non-toxic, non-harmful, GMO free, and 100% natural. We are all beautiful creatures, the most beautiful species on earth. We simply want to live as we are within our communities, where all the members, all the neighbors, come together and work together in peace, welcoming each other as they are, not as who they might want them to be.

The fundamental justification for any law or regulation that takes away or limits freedom has to be based on some compelling harm to other people. Many appeals courts have said that laws cannot stand without a compelling public interest to justify taking away the freedom from other people. Since no harm is caused to anyone, ever, from seeing another human being nude, there is no valid basis for such laws. I urge you to change these laws freely in order to see justice done. If you do not, then I and those with me will be forced to take our case to the courts. We have already contacted the ACLU, who said that what I am doing tonight is the first step in the correct process. It need go no further than this if you do the right thing and simply change the laws in Tumwater as I have suggested.
Thank you.

Legalize Body Freedom Movement

Oh, and here is how the State of Oregon words their public indecency law:
A person commits the crime of public indecency if while in, or in view of, a public place the person performs:
(a)  An act of sexual intercourse;
(b)  An act of deviate sexual intercourse; or
(c)  An act of exposing the genitals of the person with the intent of arousing the sexual desire of the person or another person.

That ends my speech. I cannot say everyone on the City Council felt the same as did the mayor, since no one else made their contempt as open as did he, but neither did anyone stop him from cutting me short and certainly no one asked me any questions when I finished. I'm certain this council will not be taking a vote to see if any of them want to do as I suggested and change this outdated, hate-filled, bigoted law designed to deprive a specialized group of their Constitutional and Civil rights, so it will be my job to visit their meeting at least once more and ask them point-blank if they have done so and let them know I intend on taking further steps if they do not want to do the decent thing and change this law on their own.

I suppose an online petition might be the next step. I know others have tried online petitions for legalizing public nudity, but that was a general petition, not one for a specifically localized city. I guess it's worth a try, and so I will get one started and see what happens. I only ask that each and every one of you who reads this blog not only sign the petition, but pass it along and ask others to do the same. If we can get the hate law of one city changed, we can do the same thing and get the hate laws of other cities changed, and perhaps one day each of us will find ourselves living in cities where we are free to walk the streets nude without being arrested or targeted by the hate mongering city officials.

Since writing the above I began the following petition. PLEASE sign it and pass it on to others who will sign and pass it on. TOGETHER we can repeal the hate laws and gain the BODY FREEDOM we deserve! https://www.change.org/p/legalize-body-freedom

As an extra bonus, below are the most recent two additions to my Nekkid Niki cartoons. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed drawing and writing them:



Learning From the Old Ways

My people are known as the Lenni Lenape , which translates as the True People . This is how we thought of ourselves, since back then ...