Naked

by Brian S. Hoffman

  The growing number of nude beachgoers in California and around the country did, however, draw the attention of local police. Isolated beaches where a legacy of informal skinny-dipping had developed over the years now began attracting hundreds of visitors looking to disrobe and enjoy the sun and surf. Crowds of clothed and unclothed beachgoers began visiting sites such as Black’s Beach in La Jolla, Shark’s Cove in Santa Barbara, and Pirate’s Cove in Malibu.64 In Massachusetts, several beaches in Cape Cod where vacationers had frequently enjoyed the pleasures of skinny-dipping saw hundreds of nude visitors. Residents who had long looked the other way when a couple or family decided to go au naturel at the beach began to grow increasingly irritated by the hundreds of mostly young people cavorting naked, drinking, littering, and illegally parking on the street.65 In California, police responded to the complaints of local residents by regularly arresting nude sunbathers and charging them with indecent exposure, as defined by Section 314 of the California Penal Code, which stated, “Every person who willfully and lewdly, either exposes his person, or the private parts thereof, in any public place, or in any place where there are present other persons to be offended or annoyed thereby . . . is guilty of a misdemeanor.”66

  Unlike most members of the ASA, who wanted to avoid confronting public-indecency laws, the many young men and women participating in nude sunbathing at the beach chose to challenge prohibitions against public nudity. On the morning of August 7, 1970, Chad Smith and his male friend visited a beach in San Diego County where they disrobed, laid on their backs on a towel, and fell asleep. Although they walked far down the beach away from residents and other beachgoers, the police awoke them and proceeded to arrest Smith for indecent exposure.67 Seeking to discourage others from going nude at the beach, the local court then found Smith guilty of violating Section 314 of the California Penal Code and gave him a suspended sentence and informal probation as long as he paid a $100 fine. The sentence, however, also required Smith to register as a sex offender.68 This threatened to permanently stain his reputation and limited his future livelihood by subjecting him to a lifetime of police monitoring. The courts hoped that the threat of being labeled a sex offender would discourage nude sunbathing at public beaches.69 The future of free beaches in the United States depended on the successful appeal of Smith’s arrest.

  The Chad Merrill Smith case revisited previous legal arguments presented by nudists who made it a point to distinguish nudity from illicit sexual activity. Like many other nudists arrested since the early 1930s in raids made on urban gymnasiums or on rurally situated clubs, Smith admitted that he “willfully” disrobed and sunbathed naked on the beach while also maintaining that no lewd behavior occurred as a result of his public nudity. The distinction between “willful” and “lewd” rested at the heart of Smith’s defense since Section 314 of the California Penal Code stated that criminal indecent exposure occurred only when a person committed an act that was both “willful” and “lewd.” In past cases, prosecutors had to show “something more than mere nudity,” such as public masturbation or exposing oneself to minors, to convict a person under Section 314.70 The police who arrested Smith stated that the “petitioner at no time had an erection or engaged in any activity directing attention to his genitals.”71 As a result, the judges presiding over the Supreme Court of California asserted that “mere nudity does not constitute a form of sexual activity” and ruled that the “necessary proof of sexual motivation was not and could not have been made in the case at bar.”72 The judges who threw out Smith’s conviction gave individuals the right to sunbathe nude on an isolated California beach as long as they did not engage in sexual behavior.

  After the favorable Smith decision, nude sunbathing seemed on the verge of gaining the mass acceptance that isolated nudist clubs struggled to achieve despite similar legal victories in the 1950s. In the summer of 1972, the New York Times noted “a trend to nudity” on the coast and assigned a reporter to profile Shark’s Cove free beach in Santa Barbara.73 The Los Angeles Times also documented the “nude impact” of the “summer of 1972” in an article that detailed the growing interest in nude sunbathing at Venice Beach.74 In May 1974, the conservative San Diego city council made Black’s Beach, a secluded location in La Jolla long popular with nude sunbathers, the first officially designated “swimsuit-optional” beach area in the United States.75 A few months later, the Los Angeles city council’s Police, Fire, and Civil Defense Committee voted unanimously to create “clothing optional zones” that would allow public nudity in certain parks and beaches while prohibiting nudity in all other areas.76 Initially, council members received a great deal of letters expressing support for the ordinance. The Los Angeles Times even printed a number of letters to the editor that endorsed nude sunbathing, objected to police harassment on the beach, and affirmed the “beauty of the entire human body without arbitrarily excepting parts of it.”77

  Rebuffed by the Supreme Court of California, free beach opponents turned to local legislatures and city councils to turn back nude sunbathers. Free beaches frequently neighbored prosperous communities with powerful neighborhood associations that considered the large crowds of young naked beachgoers and the accompanying throngs of clothed voyeuristic onlookers a disruptive spectacle that would hurt property values. In December 1973, the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors responded to upset residents by voting 3–2 to ban all nudity on public beaches including the very popular Shark’s Cove free beach that had recently been profiled by the New York Times.78 In Los Angeles, conservative groups expressed outrage that the city council had passed an ordinance that would allow “clothing optional zones” at public parks and beaches. The Smith decision meant little to local homeowners who considered nude beachgoers degenerate drug users and homosexuals who threatened to disrupt their exclusive neighborhoods.

  Local police answered complaints from homeowners by using intimidation tactics meant to discourage nude sunbathing and by arresting more defiant nude bathers on charges that fell outside the purview of the Smith decision. Since the 1940s, police employed policies and tactics that used the threat of public exposure and prosecution to scare women seeking abortions.79 On the California coast in the 1970s, police implemented similar tactics against nude sunbathers. They dressed in SWAT uniforms, mounted on horses, or screamed through bullhorns from helicopters to implore nude sunbathers to put on their clothes or face being arrested on indecent-exposure charges. While most sunbathers put on their clothes and fled from the beach immediately, officers used the sex-criminal classification that came with an indecent-exposure conviction to scare more committed individuals. The police knew, however, that the courts would dismiss indecent-exposure charges without proof that an illicit act had occurred on the beach. Once in custody, officers “offered” individuals a plea to a lesser charge of “disturbing the peace,” which carried a twenty-five-dollar fine and did not require them to register as a sex offender.80 The police anticipated that bringing nude sunbathers in contact with the criminal justice system would ultimately make individuals think twice about disrobing on public beaches.

  The popularity of free beaches among gay men especially drew the ire of neighbors, police officers, and prosecutors. Gay rights groups saw the Smith decision as a boon. Sandy Blixton, a “left-wing organizer and member of the homosexual group Lavender People,” anticipated that the summer would bring an “increase in activities” since the group could respond to any arrests with “a class action” suit against the police. Like generations of nudists before him, Blixton believed that “it’s a healthy thing for people to express their freedom, to be able to feel the sun and get a tan.”81 Yet the police treated nude gay men at the beach much more harshly than they treated heterosexual nudists or even lesbian nude sunbathers. Blixton observed, “Our sisters have not been molested” by the police, or they received only light fines.82 Heterosexual men arrested for going naked on public beaches usually escaped indecent-exposure charges by pleading to the lesser offense of disturbing th
e peace. The Los Angeles Police Department explained that most of the “Venice nudity” that resulted in the arrest of fifty men since the Smith decision involved “drinking and homosexuality” and included “sexual activity which would be considered lewd.” In contrast to the lenient response to heterosexual nudists, the Los Angeles district attorney put gay male nudists on trial for indecent exposure, and in more than half the cases, the “evidence has been sufficient to convince the court of lewd intent.”83 The efforts of the police to prosecute gay men for indecent exposure curtailed the number of nude sunbathers on Venice Beach.

  Religious groups, conservatives, and senior citizens, already unhappy with what they perceived to be an excessively permissive society, campaigned against the effort to make Venice Beach clothing optional. When the Reverend Timothy Manning, the archbishop of Los Angeles, publicly denounced the ordinance as “another instance of the permissiveness that is corroding our culture and victimizing our young people,” hundreds of calls and letters from upset residents began to inundate the city council.84 Councilmen Donald Lorenzen and Robert Wilkinson quickly introduced an antinudity amendment that prohibited all nudity at city parks and beaches. Wilkinson, who represented the more conservative West Valley district of Los Angeles, echoed the archbishop’s opposition to the more permissive sexual climate by asserting, “it’s enough we have pornography on the streets and all these nude bars without this [a clothing-optional beach].” He saw free beaches as a “cancer that could spread throughout the city.”85 Police chief Ed Davis also spoke out against the counterculture groups that promoted a message of sexual liberation at Venice Beach when he objected to “bongo drummers [who] encourage sexuality by sensuous dancing and simulated sex acts in rhythm.” Noting that “crime and marijuana use is up 26% because of the nude bathers and the Peeping Toms it attracts,” he urged the city council to adopt the antinudity amendment, since the recent Smith decision made it difficult for police to make and prosecute individuals for indecent exposure. The campaign against the Los Angeles city council’s clothing-optional ordinance reflected a conservative rejection of the politics of sexual liberation advocated by many young students and activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

  The absence of a strong, structured national organization made it difficult for free beach activists to respond to a well-organized and vocal opposition. The respectable policies of organized nudism clashed with the young activists, gay men and women, and sexually tolerant nudists who frequented free beaches. The distrust, animosity, and dissatisfaction that free beach activists and organized nudists felt for one another created a void of leadership and organization. Eugene Callen, a German immigrant who maintained his interest in nudism after coming to the United States in 1948, tried to bridge this void by establishing Beachfront U.S.A. after he witnessed police harass nude bathers at Pirate’s Cove Beach in Malibu during the summer of 1972. The small organization first proposed the clothing-optional zones to the Los Angeles city council as a way of avoiding future confrontations, protecting nude bathers from voyeurs, and securing more spacious sites.86 While Beachfront U.S.A. initially received strong support, the small group did not have the resources or personnel to counter the enormous public resistance to the measure. Despite the growing popularity of nude sunbathing on public beaches, organized nudists chose not to support the “clothing optional” ordinance before the Los Angeles city council.

  Individual supporters of nude sunbathing took it upon themselves to advocate for the free beach lifestyle. Robert Opel, a professional photographer who worked for the Advocate, a popular lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) interest magazine founded in 1967, decided to make a dramatic statement in support of the “clothing optional” ordinance. A few months earlier, Opel briefly gained fame when he streaked across the stage at the forty-sixth Academy Awards. The incident infamously prompted David Niven, who was introducing Elizabeth Taylor at the time, to adlib, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was almost bound to happen. . . . But isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?” On July 12, 1974, in front of an overflowing crowd of four hundred supporters, the full Los Angeles city council, and police chief Ed Davis, Opel again unzipped his blue pants suit, jumped over a guard rail, and ran through the chamber naked, holding up his arms in a V shape and shouting, “Is this lewd?” He drew whistles and hoots and prompted one woman to jump out of the crowd, pointing her finger and screaming at the city council, “Is this what you want?”87

  Opel spoke for many of the nude sunbathers who frequented Venice Beach. He was a professional photographer who later went on to operate the “Fey-way” art gallery in San Francisco, which showcased gay male erotic art and helped launch the careers of Robert Mapplethorpe and Tom of Finland. While the straggly haired gay activist and artist avoided arrest at the Academy Awards, police at the city council meeting immediately took Opel away and charged him with indecent exposure and disturbing the peace. At his trial, he explained that he wanted to “give the council an example of what a live nude person looked like, and to show them that there were no reasons to conclude that simply being nude was being lewd.”88 The jury agreed with Opel and convicted him of disturbing the peace rather than the more serious charge of indecent exposure. The jury spokesman stated that they “did not feel the defendant created a lewd act by approaching the council in the manner he did.”89 Opel’s actions created a spectacle that promoted the ideas and principles of the free beach movement as well as the politics of sexual liberation.

  The Los Angeles city council, despite the best efforts of Robert Opel and Beachfront U.S.A., declined to support the “clothing optional” ordinance and passed an antinudity measure that contradicted the state supreme court’s decision regarding Chad Merrill Smith. The Los Angeles city council voted 12–1 to prohibit nudity at all city parks, playgrounds, and beaches and to punish transgressors with a $500 fine or six months in jail. The ACLU immediately filed a lawsuit against the ordinance, arguing that “state law regulates nude behavior and pre-empts all local laws on the subject.”90 The organization also asserted that prohibiting nude sunbathing violated the First Amendment because it constituted a form of expression. Beachfront U.S.A. filed its own lawsuit, arguing that the ordinance infringes on its right to freedom of religion and discriminates against women because it prohibits the exposure of the female breast but not the male breast. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David N. Eagleson agreed that nude sunbathing did not constitute a sexual activity. He reasoned, however, that local laws had jurisdiction over whether men and women wore bathing suits in public precisely because it was not considered a sexual activity, which he asserted fell to the state government of California to regulate. By the beginning of August 1974, police began arresting the first nude sunbathers, who continued to protest that they were “not doing anything wrong.”91 The ongoing debates over the legality of nude sunbathing in the courtroom and on the beach threatened to endanger the future growth of the free beach movement in the United States.

  The Naturist Society

  A similar dispute over the Truro Free Beach in the summer of 1974 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, expanded the issue of nude sunbathing beyond the West Coast. A long tradition of skinny-dipping prevailed at Truro Beach. Dating back to the 1920s, figures such as Dwight Macdonald, Max Eastman, Eugene O’Neil, John Reed, and Louise Bryant frequently took advantage of the private beaches in Cape Cod to skinny-dip, and the site developed a reputation as a nude beach. By the mid-1970s, hundreds of young students, activists, and committed nudists began flocking to the site to sunbathe and swim in the nude. The dramatic increase in traffic, noise, litter, and trespassing upset neighbors who had once been tolerant of discreet nude bathers on the local beaches. Responding to complaints in the summer of 1974, Lawrence Hadley, the Cape Cod National Seashore superintendent, wrote regulations into the Federal Register that prohibited nude bathing within the Cape Cod National Seashore
. Free beach advocates immediately rallied to overturn the first federal policies against nude sunbathing at national parks.

  The campaign to reclaim Truro Free Beach ultimately led to the formation of a national organization that gave voice to a new generation of nudists and redefined nudism as a lifestyle choice rather than a social movement. Lee Baxandall, a political activist, playwright, and publisher who had enjoyed nude sunbathing at the Truro Free Beach with his wife and child since 1968, responded to the federal prohibition of nudity by establishing the Free the Free Beach Committee. Unlike Eugene Callen and Beachfront U.S.A., Baxandall spoke for the many young students and activists interested in nude sunbathing, and he had the ability to coordinate large demonstrations to advocate for free beaches. After studying history, literature, and aesthetics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and traveling abroad, where he developed an interest in the German playwright Berthold Brecht, Baxandall went on to write and direct his own off-Broadway plays and acted as an editor of the New Left periodical Studies of the Left. Skilled in theatrical drama, politics, and communication, Baxandall began coordinating a mass protest to reclaim Truro Free Beach. Baxandall, however, lacked the necessary permits to hold a formal demonstration on federal land. Instead, he reached out to the many young students and nude beachgoers in the area by promoting a “free beach party.” While the ACLU of Massachusetts appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Baxandall advertised the event on posters that critiqued the new federal policy with an image of a bear in a park-ranger suit holding binoculars and a can of chemical mace and wearing a hat that read, “smutty.” Underneath the image that mocked the intentions of the park rangers, the poster implored, “Come to the free beach party! Free the free beach! Dress optional.”92 In addition, Baxandall’s friend Daniel Schecter, a Boston disc jockey, helped promote the “dress-optional celebration” on his popular radio show. On August 24, 1975, over two thousand men and women assembled on Truro’s Brush Hollow free beach and removed their clothing. Far outnumbered, the local police and park rangers found it nearly impossible to enforce the recently enacted federal regulations. Local and national media reports that documented the huge crowds, the absence of arrests, and the lack of any serious problems suggested that the recently enacted regulations might be unnecessary. Free beach activists were frustrated by the ambiguous legal rulings that jeopardized nude beach sunbathing along the West Coast, but the successful experience in Cape Cod signaled to them that mass demonstrations represented an effective way to resist antinudity policies.