May 12th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
Her Crime Is Annoying A Bishop
This is sort of disturbing. As unpacked at Naked Protesters, it appears that Carnegie Mellon University instructed its pet campus police force to charge a student with indecent exposure, but only did so after a complaint from the local Catholic bishop about her behavior. Seems she wore a pope hat (and no pants at all) in the student parade:
That smacks of abuse of power to me — the bishop’s and the university’s both.
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Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=9838
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=9838
While I have not traveled across the entire US being an Army brat I have been to a lot of places and have yet to find anywhere in the US that this would not be considered indecent exposure “pope hat” or not.
The campus police were derelict in the responsibilities (as was the University). Mocking the papacy is hardly illegal, the manner in which they chose to accomplish that act was. In some states this is also enough to get you placed on a sexual offenders list.
Krav, there’s no doubt it was indecent exposure as that law is written in most states. That’s not the point.
The point is that the campus police did not make an arrest and did not press any charges until the local bishop complained. They exercised their enforcement discretion in favor of this person, as was their right. And then they changed their mind to placate someone whose opinion is not supposed to influence their exercise of that discretion.
Admittedly the picture’s a little fuzzy, but it looks more like DECENT exposure to me.
All kidding aside, a naked human body is not, and should not, in and of itself be indecent or “dirty”. If it was a male, wielding his erection in his hand, I could see how someone might fear that he was about to assault them, but if you ask me, if God had wanted her to wear pants, she would have been born with them. I’m not afraid of this girl, nor am I alarmed by her appearance, nor do I perceive any actual sexual element to her action.
Nudity is not an invitation to have sex. Even primitive tropical hunter-gatherer cultures understand this, and nudity is (or historically was), often the norm in such cases. for instance, in 1498, at Trinity Island, Trinidad, Christopher Columbus found it’s women to be entirely naked.
At the University of California, Berkeley, in September 1992, a boy in his second year in college began appearing naked in public, and led a campus “nude-in” to protest social repression. Campus police first arrested him that fall for indecent exposure when he jogged naked outside late one Saturday night. The county prosecutor refused to prosecute, concluding that nudity without lewd behavior was not illegal. He typically attended classes wearing only sandals and a backpack, became a cause célèbre at the university for a while.
In Seattle, on July 29, 2006 Daniel Lorenz Johnson ran the entire length of the 5K United Healthcare Torchlight Run at Seafair, wearing only bodypaint, socks, and shoes, in an attempt to encourage others to participate in a creatively adorned manner and to jump-start a related event called the Jaybird Run. Who was harmed?
Beginning in 1985: The University of Michigan’s “Naked Mile” was first organized – a run by streakers marking the last day of classes in winter. It was started by a handful of students and later grew to around a thousand participants annually. Beginning in 1999, there’s been an annual event called the “April Fool’s Naked Run” in Portland, Oregon. In 2004 the World Naked Bike Ride began. No harm, no foul…
In 2003—2004 a man walked the length of Great Britain from Land’s End to John o’ Groats with nothing on except boots, socks, rucksack and sometimes a hat, after having quit his job as a lorry driver. Nobody was harmed that I can recall.
In a wholly unrelated incident, Vincent Bethell made legal history on 10 January 2001, by being the first defendant to stand trial naked in a UK court. The trial was at Southwark Crown Court London. Vincent was charged with the crime of “Public Nuisance”, which carried a maximum sentence of Life imprisonment. Vincent was naked throughout this court case, furthermore he was found unanimously not guilty by the jury.
“To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view [nudity], for the objection is irrational.”
– activist Terri Sue Webb in the Spring 2002 edition of Nude and Natural magazine.
Walt Whitman (Famed American poet, essayist and journalist), on “indecency”:
“Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me… Nature was naked, and I was also… Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! – ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.”
Anthropologists tell us that clothing grew out of body adornment, used to denote status, power, and wealth, as an attempt to place oneself in a class above one’s peers. Shame and modesty came later as a result.
Arresting her for wearing the hat, was a mere inexcusable violation of her own First Amendment rights to the freedom of speech and expression.
From that fuzzy photo, are we sure she’s not wearing a merkin? She should have been … then no “indecent exposure”.
If the student’s intent was to mock the Roman Catholic Church, then my (perhaps naive) view is that there would be a First Amendment/free expression issue here even if she did violate an indecent exposure statute, an issue analogous to the one posed in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989).
Obviously Carnegie Mellon University would not, as a private actor, be bound by the terms of the First Amendment. But the CMU police who are (I would guess) sworn Pennsylvania law enforcement would be, and it would at least be very interesting to explore whether their actions, in choosing to obey CMU’s abusive orders issued at the behest of a religious figure’s complaints, constituted an Establishment Clause violation. A civil action against them under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 would be sort of delightful.
I’m not often sorry I’m not a lawyer. But sometimes I am.
Dr. Faustus, I’m ashamed to admit you’ve reasoned more rigorously (and legally) about this than I bothered to do. Obviously that law school education was wasted on me. Because I’d say you’re quite right. My guess, however, is that the actual instructions and influence that CMU exercised over its pet police were sufficiently vague and wing/nudge as to be difficult to prove in litigation — and order to “Investigate this!” in a stern tone where the subtext (“Punish them!”) was not explicitly expressed in front of witnesses, but was clearly understood.
The interesting and frustrating and hypocritical thing here is that CMU expressly recited expressive rights as their reason for not imposing any University discipline — and then turned around and instructed their pet cops to take criminal action instead.
Why do these protests always involve the Catholic church? Doesn’t anyone think islam or Christian orthodox churches or orthodox Judaism deserve a slam?
By the way, if it’s a free speech issue why isn’t anyone protesting new federal guidelines about sexual harassment on campus? Basically, you’re guilty until proven innocent.