205ARGUE

wilderness for these very reasons, and would it not be compromised by undue outside interference, such as
unnecessary clothing regulations?
145. Recreation managers unfortunately often "solve" the issue of nude recreation, not by managing it, but
by ignoring it.
Thus managers "permit" nudity on remote beaches without facilities or lifeguards, then point to litter, drug
use, and other problems as a consequence of the nudity rather than the lack of active management.
146. If public nude recreation can be widely accepted in societies considered repressive by Americans (for
example, formerly-socialist Yugoslavia, once-communist East Germany, Orthodox Greece, or Catholic France), it
ought to be tolerated in democratic Europe and in America, "the land of the free." 207
Lee Baxandall has reported that "almost every town [on East Germany's coast] has an FKK [nude] beach,
some 90 sites serving 200,000 campers/lodgers annually; more FKK than textile beaches. A GDR poll found 57% of
the population approving of nude recreation, 30% had no opinion, and only 13% opposed." 208 Unfortunately, with
the reunification of Germany, the West has exported to the East both pornography and beach restrictions: now that
East Germany is "free," many of its beaches aren't. A June 1992 UPI dispatch from Ahlbeck noted that "the
controversy stems from the introduction of western German-style regulations on traditionally nude eastern German
beaches." 209 Ironically, authority for the new prohibitions of nudity stems from a Nazi-era regulation carrying the
signature of Heinrich Himmler. 210
147. Anti-nudity laws are demeaning because they replace individual responsibility with state control.
148. It is inappropriate to use police resources to crack down on peaceful bathers at a beach simply because
they are nude, while taking valuable resources away from other more urgent needs.
149. It is a cruel reversal of justice when the law frowns on innocent skinnydippers, while gawkers on the
fringe of the nude beach, who pervert and fetishize the body, are accepted as "normal."
Historical support for Naturism.
150. Social nudity is part of a long historical tradition. 211 Recent Western civilization stands almost alone,
in the entire known history of humanity, in its repressive code against nudity.
151. Nudity was commonplace in the ancient Greek civilization, especially for men. 212
By the Classical Period of ancient Greece, nude exercise and athletic competition had become part of the
way of life for Greek men, and a practice which separated "modern" Greeks both from other, "barbarian" cultures
and from their own past. The original Olympic games were conducted in the nude. Plato described nudity in exercise
as a practical, useful, and rational innovation; Thucydides promoted it as simpler, freer, and more democratic, a
cultural distinction between the Greek soldier who must be in shape, lean and muscular, not portly and prosperous,
and the "barbarians" who announced their status and wealth by wearing expensive garments that gave a false
impression of elegance and authority. 213
152. Old Testament ceremonial washings, including baptism, were performed in the nude. 214 Christ, too,
was probably baptized naked--as depicted in numerous early works of art. 215
153. Roman citizens, including early Christians, bathed communally in the nude at the public baths
throughout most of the second through the fourth centuries. Nudity was also common during this period in other
parts of ancient Roman society.
154. The writings of early Christians such as Irenaeus and Tertullian make it clear that they had no ethical
reservations about communal nudity. 216