Don Quixote and SCNA

VC Reporter hit the newsstands Thursday, July 3, just in time for a long holiday weekend. On its cover, Ventura County's alternative weekly newspaper featured a story on "Naked Ambition" ("Local nudists rally for the right to stay exposed"). Reporter Jenny Lower wrote of a campaign by the Southern California Naturist Association to reinstate a nude beach just north of the Ventura County line.

"Bates Beach" is the colloquial name for an isolated stretch of state beach. You reach it by taking the Bates exit from Pacific Coast Highway, parking in the free public lot, and walking down a long sloping trail. The area proposed for nude use is far up the beach, toward Carpinteria. It is so far from the homes on Rincon Point that one would need a powerful telescope to see anyone there.

For 30 years Bates Beach had a clothing-optional tradition. It was heavily used by a group of regulars who paid more attention to their volleyball than their frequent disdain of swimsuits. About eight years ago one woman who lived in a house on Rincon Point decided to enforce her morality on the thousands of people who frequented "her" beach. She began a daily campaign of complaints to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff. They included a standard complaint form that she would re-date and FAX daily to the local Sheriff's station.

State beaches are covered by a long-standing state parks system rule, validated in the courts, called the "Cahill Policy". Created in 1972 by a director of the state parks system, this policy seeks to allow clothing-optional use of traditionally nude areas while avoiding offense to other park system users who might object. The policy states that if a member of the public complains (and this does NOT include a park ranger's or a sheriff's deputy's personal objection to the nude use), the park ranger will ask the unclothed users to get dressed and to remain dressed for the remainder of that day. The following day, with presumably a new set of visitors, nude use can continue unless there is another public complaint. This is a reasonable, polite ask-and-comply system. It recognizes the rights of everyone to use public lands for personal recreation, while preventing "user conflict" between people who have different value systems.

Despite the fact that state park rangers traditionally manage a state beach, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff (who has a right to enforce county laws anywhere) decided to act aggressively at Bates Beach. Prodded by the frequent shrill complaints from the lone woman resident, the Sheriff began sending undercover officers to ticket undressed users without warning. Santa Barbara County has an ordinance that declares it a public nuisance for a person to appear in a public place (specifically including a public beach) unclothed. More important, the ordinance imposes a stiff fine and requires a court appearance. The aggressive campaign of undercover, surprise enforcement quickly decimated the population of users at this public beach. It turned out that most of the people who used it didn't want to do so if they were required to wear swimsuits at all times.

Today Bates Beach is nearly deserted, even in good weather. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff succeeded in doing what wealthy homeowners in Malibu and other elite beach areas have consistently failed to do. He allowed the protests of one rich resident of Rincon Point to turn a public beach into a private beach, to the benefit of local homeowners. This is probably the core public policy issue involved at Bates Beach.

All the posturing of law enforcement officials about an anti-nudity ordinance, and their specious claims that nude use "attracts perverts", probably masks the fact that aggressive law enforcement of anti-nudity rules at traditionally clothing-optional beaches reflects a personal value preference by the enforcing officers. This same scenario is playing out NOW at San Onofre State Beach, at the Orange County boarder with Camp Pendleton.

At San Onofre, a newly assigned supervising park ranger has successfully enlisted his boss, new state Director of Parks and Recreation Ruth Coleman, in an effort to suspend the Cahill Policy at Trail 6. Ticketing of nude sunbathers is supposed to start after Labor Day. There were no public hearings and no efforts to seek public input of any kind. Trail 6 draws over a million visits each year. The other five trails, which are available to those who prefer to be surrounded by people wearing swimsuits, lead to beaches that are comparatively deserted.

There have been *no* documented public complaints about nude use of the Trail 6 portion of San Onofre State Beach. There have been numerous complaints about people, often homosexual partners, who cross over the south boundary of the state beach to trespass onto Camp Pendleton land. Illegal sexual behavior on Camp Pendleton land is not uncommon. Nudists who peacefully use the Trail 6 beach area object to this problem as much as the state park rangers. Sending a million law-abiding citizens away is not going to fix the problem. Guess what. If all those unclothed beach users vanish, the state will not be able to justify as many park rangers. So there will be dramatically fewer rangers to handle the "perverts" problem, and NO members of the public to self-police the state beach. Just as at Bates Beach, sending nude users away still leaves the problem that supposedly justified the anti-nudity crackdown.

People who choose to enter public service need to realize that their role is to protect public resources for the enjoyment of the people they serve. Public service is not an entitlement to enforce one's personal morality under a cloak of authority.

As one of the founders of the Southern California Naturist Association, this writer was quoted extensively by name in the VC Reporter article. Since he is a member of a Perfectly Normal Family, this of course proves that nudists and naturists are Perfectly Normal People. If you want to check this out for yourself, SCNA holds a public discussion group on the second Tuesday of each month at a pizza restaurant in the San Fernando Valley. Call 818-225-2273 (818-CAL-BARE) or write 'scna(atsign)socalnaturist(dot)org' for the location. The photograph on this post is courtesty of SCNA's Nude Beach Alliance. Visit nudebeachalliance(dot)com for more information.