I’d say this means that America needs to grow up, but I figure children left to their own devices would handle this a lot better than the adults are:
Springfield, Virginia resident Eric Williamson was arrested and charged with indecent exposure yesterday for failing to put on any clothes after getting up at 5:30 am to make some coffee. A woman and her 7-year-old daughter [son according to another link] had cut across Williamson’s front yard and saw him through his kitchen window.
The police are claiming he was intending to be seen by the two who were cutting across his lawn at 5:30am. My question…should that even matter? Burlington, VT aside, it seems reasonable that public nudity should probably be restricted to select areas or for special events, select times where one can reasonably avoid it. However, it seems far fetched to restrict nudity within one’s home or fenced in areas, even if that nudity is visible from a public place.
The precedent being attempted here seems to encourage peeping toms and other perverts. Suddenly it isn’t the responsibility of people not to look into your house but yours for not being seen by those outside of it. Of course this whole problem could be solved if we were mature enough to realize that everyone is naked under their clothes and seeing that need not be a traumatic event.
October 21, 2009 at 9:28 pm |
I saw this on the news and I was flabbergasted. Wasn’t that woman with the child trespassing in the first place since she was cutting across his yard? And exactly how long did she stand there staring (in horror, one would suppose) before she, simply, walked away?
This world makes me shake my head sometimes…
October 22, 2009 at 5:12 pm |
Well, I’m not sure you’ll get many trespassing convictions based on walking across someone’s unfenced front yard, which is what I assume is the case here.
Anyway, given our country’s aversion to nudity, I can’t help but think we’d be screwed in the event of something like a dirty bomb where large populations would need to be decontaminated (which involves stripping off contaminated clothes) in a fairly public way. There was a BBC/HBO movie based around the premise of such an attack in London that included such a scene. I just imagine prudish Americans slowing down the process by demanding privacy, resulting in many extra deaths in such an event.