I love Boulder, Colorado.  To a consummate observer of human nature, this town is an eccentric gift that keeps on giving.  Boulder’s history is ripe with examples of political protest, civil disobedience, and affluent college kids setting sofas on fire for no comprehensible reason.  Just last week, passersby were appalled and appalled again at the double-take of 52-year old, Catharine Pierce, publicly tending her plot in nothing but a thong and pink gardening gloves.  It seems like only last year that she was threatened with eviction for gardening in only a thong and pasties.  Well, I guess 2010 was Catharine’s breakout season and she decided to go rogue and rip off the pasties.  OUCH!  Now, before I go further into my observation, nakedness, without the below-the-belt bits showing, is absolutely legal in Boulder.  From bra burnings, to Halloween streakers, to La Leche members feeding their six year olds, Boulder women have been whipping out the girls with little fanfare for years…until now…until the uncovered heinie of mile high horticulture stepped out to enjoy the Spring weather and prune back her brush in public.

Upon taking their fourth and fifth looks, Catharine’s neighbors called the police citing public indecency.  An officer responding to the call urged Pierce to consider putting on a shirt since children at the school across the street were outside playing. Ultimately there was little the policeman could do.  Catharine Pierce wasn’t breaking any laws.  As a result, the unfulfilled local electorate is petitioning the City of Boulder to expand its nudity ordinances. 

Come on, citizens of Boulder, you are going about this all wrong.  From one boob to another, why not consider an approach that has nothing to do with America’s overly conservative preoccupation with nudity.  As a social liberal (and accused Socialist) you might think my first inclination would be to regulate nudity and tax it, but you would be wrong.  Instead of bothering with the legalities of decency laws and wasting the valuable time of our officers of the peace, why not fashion the restraint of nude gardening around the personal safety issue?  Just as there are seat belt laws and helmet laws, there should be laws about hoeing around 52 year-old, gravity worn, knockers!  The rose bushes alone could induce severe and life-threatening blood loss.  And if this doesn’t work, there is always the “common good” principle.  How is this good for me to catch even the faintest glimpse of anyone out in public wearing only a yellow thong, pink gardening gloves, and since this is Boulder, those disgustingly smelly, perforated rubber shoes inappropriately named after a reptile.  THERE is the decency…or lack of it.  Call the fashion police as this is definitely 911 worthy. 

Now you know I jest.  You don’t have to remind me that people have the right to be tacky, or WalMart wouldn’t sell spandex in XXXL.  But just because there is a right, should you do it or do it to excess?  There is a right to free speech, but should you yell racial slurs, spit on, and verbally threaten those you oppose?  There is a right to freedom of the press, but should words be used to recklessly slander, intentionally mislead, or libelously injure?  What I am trying to determine is the point where rights and responsibility go hand in hand. 

Those of you who are acquainted with me know that I have no problem with nudity.  The human form is a god-given and artistic creation.  In the privacy of my own property and certain beaches here and abroad, I have been known to shuck my clothes along with my inhibitions.  Though you probably won’t see me in my front yard tending my tulips.  That is where my personal responsibility takes over.  There is nothing wrong with naked gardening…depending on the motivation you are cultivating.  Perhaps that is where we all, myself included, should become a little bolder.

In keeping with the celebratory theme of 72 years of Guiding Light and the fact life does imitate   art so much of the time, I thought I would combine my commentary in this blog with my last opportunity to provide a little advice to Springfield’s Blake Marler and her retail pursuits of personal satisfaction.  So, Blake, if you are planning any kind of literary promotional tour to Alabama, bring your own…otherwise, this information might come in handy.

The Alabama Supreme (?) Court on Friday upheld the state’s ban on the sale of sex toys.  The court majority ruled in a 7 – 2 decision that while people have the right to use the devices in private, the Legislature has the right to ban public distribution of those products.

Love Stuff, a Hoover, Alabama small business, had asked the court to strike down a 1998 law arguing that the ban violated a person’s right to sexual privacy.  “Public morality can still serve as a legitimate rational basis for regulating commercial activity, which is not a private activity,” Associate Justice, Michael F. Bolin wrote in the majority opinion.

The judges cited an opinion from Atlanta’s 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the law from an earlier case filed by the ACLU.  Under the guise of you just can’t make this shit up, the Alabama Supreme majority stated, “There is nothing ‘private’ or ‘consensual’ about the advertising and sale of a dildo”.

The attorney representing Love Stuff, Amy L. Herring, said the store’s options may include an appeal to the US Supreme Court considering the problems with the Southern appellate courts and their previous decisions.  Good luck with that one, as Justice Scalia is still on the court, and has no problem imposing his own personal set of moral values as to what should be defined as public decency.

It is refreshing to hear at least one dissenting Southern opinion in favor of civil liberties.   Associate Justice Thomas A Woodall wrote, “The majority’s focus is unduly narrow and ignores the burden the statute places on private sexual activity.”  Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb also dissented in the case.  Atta girl!

Love Stuff sought to declare unconstitutional the Alabama state law passed in 1998 that prohibits the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”   Of course there are exceptions, because what would any restrictive conservative law be without exceptions to white males, including politicians and the occasional clergy.  Just as with insurance coverage for Viagra, you can get off for medical, scientific, or educational purposes.

Educational?  I guess that’s a stimulus package Alabama conservatives have no problem saying, “Yes! Yes!” to.

The standards, which will be decided upon next spring, will revise history, civics and geography textbooks.  The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.”

Conspicuously absent is any voice of the liberal opposition, and earlier this year, a panel of right-wing “experts” recommended a report urging the 15 member committee stacked with ten Republicans to remove biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen F. Austin, and César Chávez , and replace them with history about the “motivational role the Bible and the Christian faith played in the settling of the original colonies.”

As it stands, students would get “one-sided, right wing ideology,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, chairman of the House Mexican American Caucus.  “We ought to be focusing on historical significance and historical figures. It’s important that whatever course they take, that it portray a complete view of our history and not a jaded view to suit one’s partisan agenda or one’s partisan philosophy,” he said.

I would ask you, where is that Texas spirit?  Are you going to allow these bureaucrats to proceed in their revolution of cognitive deficiency of your kids?  Remember the Alamo? Oh, right, that’s probably not possible.  Davey Crockett was a Democrat.

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