Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Asbury Park Nixes Topless Beach

As I predicted, the Asbury Park City Council killed any idea for a "topless" beach after a city attorney reported that two city ordinances currently prohibit women from baring their breasts, and for anyone to be nude in public. The council expressed no intention to make any changes to existing laws.

Naturally, the proposal was defeated for all the wrong reasons, with people worried that exposed female breasts would scare away families and be somehow dangerous to children. Indeed, the beach idea was ill-conceived out of a twisted intention of promoting women's rights by forcing them to practice their "equality" on a segregated stretch of beach.

For AANR to have associated itself and its membership to this fiasco is an embarrassment, showing not only a lack of common sense, but a dearth of integrity as well.

Lacking a true grassroots movement to further topfree equality in Asbury Park, the proposal was doomed from the start. Topfreedom will only come when enough women decide that they really want the same rights already extended to men, who are free to remove their shirts virtually anywhere in public, and certainly at any beach or pool.

Sadly, the quick dispatch of this "topless" beach idea is likely to quash any enthusiasm for more clothing-optional beaches in New Jersey for the foreseeable future, and is a clear setback to topfree equality in the Garden State.

No comments:

Post a Comment