San Onofre Beach in Danger

[crasher35]

So, park rangers have been citing and arresting nudists at San Onofre Beach in California lately. This is probably the best write-up I've seen so far of the events and what's going on...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/30/san-onofre-naked-truth-about-nude-beaches/

San Onofre: The naked truth about nude beaches


True story.

About 40 years ago, when I was teaching at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, a friend dropped by and invited me to a party.

“There’s just one thing,” he said. “Everybody is going to be naked.”

The Canadian must have noticed my eyebrows levitating because he quickly added, “Don’t worry about it. It’s just like wearing a tuxedo.”

Birthday suit, monkey suit. Same difference?

I’m always reminded of that tuxedo line when the region’s two world-famous, and famously remote, nude beaches — San Onofre State Beach’s Trail 6 and the northern section of Black’s Beach — are threatened with extinction.

Rather than envisioning bodies of all shapes, sizes and ages soaking up rays, I tend to substitute sunbathers in tuxedos. (At my age, it can be more appealing.)

There’s anecdotal evidence from park rangers that San Onofre’s nude beach has become a staging ground for lascivious behavior, even the production of pornographic films.

These reports have given park officials the ammunition they need to issue citations to scofflaws in the buff, pushing some of them south to Camp Pendleton’s Gold Beach where they don’t belong, suited up or not.

Until two years ago, the rules pertaining to nudity had been pretty much in the eye of the beholder. In state parks, the “Cahill Policy” was adopted in 1979, basically decreeing it was OK to be naked on a designated beach so long as no one minds and nothing lecherous happens.

This is a civilized approach, it seems to me. You may skinny-dip in certain areas so long as no “normal” — now there’s a loaded adjective — person could find the display offensive.

The perceptual challenge, of course, is that innocent nudity is closely associated with adult sexuality. We can’t help it. It’s how we’re culturally wired.

For many teenagers of my generation, naturist movies or magazines showing Scandinavian families playing volleyball was a titillating gateway to erotic fantasy. (For today’s teenagers with access to the hyper-sexed Internet, that sort of al fresco family sport must seem oddly quaint.)

It goes against the grain but SoCal naturists now appear to enjoy a lesser amount of open-air personal freedom today than, say, 40 years ago. Their liberty is enjoyed at the discretion of park rangers whose morale reportedly has been negatively affected by bare bodies on the beach.

No amendment explicitly guarantees that the right to bare bottoms shall not be infringed.

It’s fair to say, however, that there’s public support for faraway nude beaches, even from those, like myself, who would rather play tennis in a tuxedo than lounge nude at the beach with a group that included other saggy 60-somethings. (An unscientific U-T online poll supporting nude sunbathers backs this tolerant view.)

Aware of the wind at their back, naturists are fighting to expose their plight in public. Some are willing to go to trial.

To counter that strategy, the District Attorney’s Office is knocking the garden-variety citations down to infractions, the equivalent of a parking ticket, thus denying the naturists the opportunity to unveil their arguments to juries that might be sympathetic to the live-free argument that nudity is an inalienable right to happiness so long as it does not disturb the peace.

Arguably the worst thing about America is our puritan streak. Arguably the best thing about America is our libertarian streak. It’s what orders government out of the bedroom. It’s what gets dogs out in designated parks without leashes.

If we can find areas where dogs run free, surely we can look the other way at sections of beach where sunbathers run around au naturel.

Vancouver, which goes a little crazy when the sun is out, boasts one of the most popular clothing-optional gathering places in the world at Wreck Beach, near UBC.

Several weeks ago, the 15th annual 5K “Bare Buns Run” was completed, a popular event that would bend many a blue nose out of shape here in California.

In Vancouver, the etiquette code admonishes sunbathers to be respectful of others.

“Show the public that nude is not lewd or rude. No overt sexual activity!” reads the Wreck Beach website.

As in the Garden of Eden, the world’s original clothing-optional retreat, you always run the risk of a bad apple. Evidently, San Onofre has had a few.

Nevertheless, it would be a local tragedy if these two remote paradises were lost forever.

logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com

(760) 752-6756.