Sign the petition — Legal Issues on True Nudists

Bill BowserOriginal Poster

Jan 14, 2014

Someone has just created a "We the people" petition on the White House website advocating the designation of more federal property for nude recreation. (Information and a link to the petition can be found here: http://clothing-optional-access.weebly.com ) If 100,000 people sign the petition by Feb. 11 the federal government will address the issue. I urge everyone to sign the petition. The potential benefits are enormous.

Petitioner #9

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NU
nuderunr
Jan 19, 2014
[quote]More Free beaches/areas will hurt established nudist resorts where members are screened.
Remember anything you get free is worth what you pay for it.[/quote]Thank you for the comment. I addressed it in the other threadhttp://clothing-optional-access.weebly.com/communications-hub.html
(Post #10) so to avoid redundancy I won't repeat it verbatim. It is a legitimate concern but one I feel is unfounded. One thing however I neglected to include in the response to your comment in the above referenced thread is this. We have to remember that not every state has nudist landed clubs or resorts. In Arkansas as one example, they are prohibited by draconian laws that regulate nudity.

ARKANSAS

Title 5 - Criminal Offenses
Subtitle 6 - Offenses Against Public Health, Safety, Or Welfare
Chapter 68 - Obscenity
Subchapter 2 - Offenses Generally

Â§ 5-68-204 - Nudism.

(c) It is unlawful for any:

(1) Person, club, camp, corporation, partnership, association, or organization to advocate, demonstrate, or promote nudism; or

(2) Person to rent, lease, or otherwise permit his or her land, premises, or buildings to be used for the purpose of advocating, demonstrating, or promoting nudism.

(d) Any person, club, camp, corporation, partnership, association, or organization violating any provision of this section is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor for each offense.

Not only are nudist clubs and resorts not permitted, it is against the law in Arkansas to even "advocate" nudity. There are however national parks in Arkansas. If this petition achieves it ultimate goal and clothing optional areas were officially designated in those parks, users would not be subject to Arkansas laws while on federal-owned property (as they are now) and would have places to enjoy outdoor nude recreation without either risking arrest, as many Arkansas nudists have to do now, or having to spend the money to travel out of state to somewhere that nudist clubs and resorts are available. These people deserve access for nude recreation and it certainly isn't going to have any impact on clubs or resorts if they were given clothing optional choices on federally-managed public lands.

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DE
DesertRat
Jan 19, 2014
I signed the petition!

I have also written an e-mail to TT1 asking him to consider placing a link to this petition on the home page of the TN web site. That way everyone who comes to the site will have the opportunity to become aware of the petition and possibly signing it. It will also prove to TT1 and the members of TN the power that this site has. Hopefully it will not show us to be a bunch of wimps with no credibility at all.
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nuderunr
Jan 19, 2014
Great idea DesertRat! Thanks for doing that! That's another example of how empowered people come up with creative solutions. Well done.

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nuderunr
Jan 19, 2014
By way of update, on the advice of all who have been emailing, today formal requests for support of the petition were sent to the decision makers at The Naturist Society and the American Association for Nude Recreation. In hindsight it was a mistake to not solicit their support at the beginning. They simply have resources like a national presence and media contacts that we do not. So we shall now see who will stand with us. An updated memo for all supporters has been posted on the Communications Hub at the informational website for anyone interestedhttp://clothing-optional-access.weebly.com/communications-hub.html

415 signatures at 8:33 p.m. EST! Great job everyone!

The petition --->http://wh.gov/lIUyG

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NU
nuderunr
Jan 19, 2014
Don't let this this happen to you!http://dallasnudistcultureexaminer.tumblr.com/post/73907232416/when-you-dont-bother-signing-the-clothing
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NU
nuderunr
Jan 20, 2014
For those interested you can view the Jan. 20 update here -->http://dallasnudistcultureexaminer.tumblr.com/post/73972568222/clothing-optional-petition-daily-update-jan-20
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Bill BowserOriginal Poster
Jan 20, 2014
Those of you who have not checked Nuderunr's petition status update today will undoubtedly be surprised and pleased to know that AANR Tweeted this morning that they now support this petition. We should all welcome this development.
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NU
nuderunr
Jan 20, 2014
Just received word from Scott Withers, Director of Government Affairs Team, American Association for Nude Recreation...

"AANR is asking all of its members and associates and partner groups to support and sign the petition. We absolutely support what you are trying to do. It's our driving force."

Petition:http://wh.gov/lIUyG
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ravensflyinnow
Jan 20, 2014
[quote]Just received word from Scott Withers, Director of Government Affairs Team, American Association for Nude Recreation...

"AANR is asking all of its members and associates and partner groups to support and sign the petition. We absolutely support what you are trying to do. It's our driving force."

Petition:http://wh.gov/lIUyG
[/quote]This is great news...hopefully we will see the numbers jump in the next few days!!
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Bill BowserOriginal Poster
Jan 20, 2014
AANR support is great, but they lack the means to get information out to their members very quickly. There is a page about the petition on their website, but not many members will ever see it. I have been told by someone I trust that the Naturist Action Committee, part of TNS, is preparing to send out one of their Action Alerts regarding supporting the petition. The NAC has the ability to quickly reach out to lots of people, so we should soon see a significant increase in the number of signatures. Things are looking up.
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Bill BowserOriginal Poster
Jan 21, 2014
When I checked the petition website a few minutes ago I found 1,015 signatures. Support from the AANR has had a dramatic impact on the numbers. With the continued effort of all the supporters this can be a big success. But, we still have a long way to go.
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John
Jan 21, 2014
Yep, Just received an email from AANR promoting the petition.
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NU
nuderunr
Jan 21, 2014
Just realized that I forgot to post a link to the daily update so here it is for anyone interested who hasn't seen it.

http://dallasnudistcultureexaminer.tumblr.com/post/74086993943/clothing-optional-petition-daily-update-jan-21

Sorry for the delay, it slipped my mind. Support from AANR has really upped the tempo and I can't wait to see Bill's numbers at midnight tonight. I just checked and we are now well over 1,200 signatures. We have gained some real traction now and need to keep building momentum. Today I have contacted a couple of other potential partner organizations and I'm working on another Op-Ed aimed at a larger market media outlet which I hope will give us more mainstream exposure.

Thanks to everyone who has signed and who has gone above and beyond by spreading the word, emailing and doing other things to support the cause. Please continue. As Bill said, we still have a long way to go and a short time to get there.

Petition Link:http://wh.gov/lIUyG

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DMNYANKEE
Jan 22, 2014
I signed # 1549 need 100.000 by Feb 12
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Timo2009
Jan 22, 2014
Done. Thanks for the heads-up.
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nuderunr
Jan 22, 2014
Here is the link to the daily update for todayhttp://dallasnudistcultureexaminer.tumblr.com/post/74203912691/clothing-optional-petition-daily-update-jan-22
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ME
Member
Jan 22, 2014
First, let me say I signed. #527 I believe. The last I looked (a couple minutes ago) there were only 1750 signatures or so. At the rate folks are signing the amount of signatures required will be far, far short of the 100K target by the deadline. My thought is this. If indeed the numbers are way short, will this end up having the opposite (negative) effect on the cause to get more C/O opportunities? Will the textile world see that and say 'we knew there couldn't be that many crazy naked people out there' and have even more ammunition to use against us?Even though there has to be far more nudists out there than the 100K required to be heard the silence will be deafening I'm afraid. I just hope we're not taking one step forward and two steps back. But maybe that petition site is so obscure that it won't hurt us (or help us).
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Bill BowserOriginal Poster
Jan 22, 2014
Actually the number of signatures is not behind where a petition drive of this sort would be expected to be at this point. I believe that growth in this situation theoretically would be geometrical, the number of signatures tomorrow would X% more than the number who signed today. We are substantially ahead of my projection, but yesterday's big jump is unlikely to be sustained. We all need to do whatever we can to drum up as much support as we can.

And, even if this effort fails miserably there is only a remote possibility that it will have an adverse impact on our culture. This is borne out by the fact that a similar petition was posted at whitehouse.gov last year, which failed to get much support, and almost no one in the naturist community has heard anything about it. I'm unaware of any any significant negative effects as a result of this failure. It is unfortunate that so many nudists are reluctant to admit any connection with nudism and refuse to openly support petitions like this.
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nuderunr
Jan 22, 2014
[quote]First, let me say I signed. #527 I believe. The last I looked (a couple minutes ago) there were only 1750 signatures or so. At the rate folks are signing the amount of signatures required will be far, far short of the 100K target by the deadline. My thought is this. If indeed the numbers are way short, will this end up having the opposite (negative) effect on the cause to get more C/O opportunities? Will the textile world see that and say 'we knew there couldn't be that many crazy naked people out there' and have even more ammunition to use against us?Even though there has to be far more nudists out there than the 100K required to be heard the silence will be deafening I'm afraid. I just hope we're not taking one step forward and two steps back. But maybe that petition site is so obscure that it won't hurt us (or help us).[/quote]To echo Bill, an effort of this type isn't a simple matter of dividing 100,000 by 30 days and saying we need to get about 3,300 signatures a day to be successful. I believed it was possible to get 100,000 signatures if enough people who cared about the issue heard about the petition and cared enough to spend the 3-4 minutes it takes to create an account at the site and sign.

It is hard these days to get people to engage because frankly most just don't believe they have the ability to make a difference and help change anything. But I don't think it ever hurts to try.

As far as the question will it hurt us over the long term if we don't succeed. Doubtful, with respect to the outside world and those who oppose us. It's unlikely they even know about the petition. We would need some national media entity to see the petition and decide to pick it up in a story that got widespread general attention. That's unlikely unless we got tens of thousands more signatures above what we have now. I've seen news articles on "We the People" petitions but never on one that had less than 30-40 thousand signatures.

Where it may hurt us is within our own community. It will simply be more reinforcement of the idea "it won't work anyway so why bother" which is already a problem. So I suspect many people who were hopeful and signed this petition might be less likely to get involved next time if this isn't successful. We already know the outcome of doing nothing. So I think it never hurts to try. Otherwise we will just keep getting the same thing we have got the last several years. One clothing optional beach after another will go until none are left.

Personally, I'm not real happy with NAC right now but in fairness, in the past they have been successful in defending our clothing optional access. But this country has been getting more and more "morally" conservative for years and less and less tolerant of nudists and naturists. As a result, NAC has not had a win in many years. San Onofre Beach is one recent example. Individuals are going to have to step up. The organizations can't do it alone anymore. If enough of us aren't willing to do that then I guess as a community then we will get what we deserve - less options, less rights.

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macnude
Jan 22, 2014
RE: Reluctant to Sign the Clothing Optional Access Petition?I sent to following e-mail to our local radio, TV and newspaper under the subjectNudists petition the White House. Will it do any good? I don't know, however, if everyone reading this thread did the same in their area, there is the chance that it would catch the right persons attention and give us the exposure (no pun intended) which we need. "Nudists across the Nation are petitioning the White House for greater access to Federal lands and beaches. For additional information, please click this link." please click this link."[url=] https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/designate-portions-public-lands-under-management-federal-government-clothing-optional-recreational/15TLkVMJP.S[/url] [url=https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/designate-portions-public-lands-under-management-federal-government-clothing-optional-recreational/15TLkVMJP.S][/url]. Below is the link to the article which was published due to my efforts to promote The Record Skinny Dip. Individual effort can make a difference.http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2010/07/08/1574518/cover-story.html

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Bill BowserOriginal Poster
Jan 22, 2014
In order to attract more attention and support I printed out some flyers on brightly colored paper and posted them on some of the bulletin boards here at Glen Eden. I invite those of you who are in a position to do so to do something like this:

HAVE YOU SIGNED THE PETITION?AANR has sent out an Urgent Action Request asking their members to do so.

There is a petition posted on the whitehouse.gov website which requests that more public land be designated for nude recreational use.

This is a cause we should all support. It is easy to do. Go on line to petitions.whitehouse.gov.Click on "VIEW PETITIONS"

Scroll down and click on the one which says:"Designate portions of public lands under management of the federal government forclothing optional recreational use."

Create an account if you don't already have one, and then electronically sign the petition.

Once you sign it only your initials will be visible to others, so your privacy will be respected.

Please help make this a great success.If the petition gets at least 100,000 signatures by February 11 this issue will receive some much needed attention from the policy makers in Washington. Ask your friends and neighbors for their support too.

Unfortunately all the formatting is lost when I copy the text here, but I'm sure you get the idea.

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NU
nuderunr
Jan 24, 2014
Link to the current updatehttp://dallasnudistcultureexaminer.tumblr.com/post/74409189148/clothing-optional-petition-daily-update-jan-24
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nuderunr
Jan 25, 2014
Link to daily updatehttp://dallasnudistcultureexaminer.tumblr.com/post/74516178317/clothing-optional-petition-daily-update-jan-25
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FullSun
Jan 26, 2014
2306 signatures as of a few minutes ago. It has definitely slowed down. I would hope this would at least make a strong showing not only a couple thousand signatures.
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