http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/22/world/main662584.shtml
Alarmed by glimpses of sweaty citizens in the buff, the city council in the southeastern city of Villahermosa has adopted a law banning indoor nudity, officials confirmed on Wednesday.
[…]
“The majority of houses have a lot of ventilation and we give ourselves the luxury of going naked,” Pulido said. “Because we walk past the windows, you see a lot of things.”
Great stuff.
I have some sympathy. Every day when I walk down my street I pass by an apartment. This apartment juts out over a small underpass, so as you approach it the windows of the apartment are a few centimeters above street level, meaning you can see straight inside, whether you want to or not. In fact, if you want to see where you are going, you are practically forced to look through the window. Most sensible home owners would put up thick curtains in that window, but the old German guy who lives there has no curtains at all, and most nights he walks about with practically nothing on. It is quite disgusting.
Hell, that’s probably why he bought the place!
I remember going up 3rd Ave in NYC in a bus and seeing a man in a second floor windows watering his plants–in the nude! Luckily he was watering a big fern so you could only really make out a dark swath of pubic hair below his navel, but then nothing else. It was all very lurid!
As Sam the Eagle once pointed out, we are all naked beneath our clothes.
[size=1]Does he look like Cheney or what?[/size]
I think, Tim, that you and I might disagree on just about every imaginable topic.
While I am certainly no fan of accidentally seeing ugly naked people, how the hell can anybody think it’s o.k. to regulate what people wear or don’t wear inside their own homes?
The point is that what’s going on is tantamount to indecent exposure. You also realize this is not just “crazy dudes in mexico” that have this legal concept.
There’s a general civil liability concept in the U.S. called an “attractive nuisance” (defined briefly here.)
Although this generally seems to apply to children, it has been held that people in their own homes going naked in a manner that could be seen publicly (due to windows or “ventilation”) can and has been considered an attractive nuisance for liability purposes.
One case I heard of featured a repairman that fell and injured himself because of a woman vacuuming naked in her house. She lost the case.
(P.S. Attractive does not refer to the hotornot score of the person but rather that nature of the nuisance…it attracts attention.)
So don’t go nuding it up in your casa to protest this people…you could be sued when the cable guy falls off the telephone pole because he saw your jublies through the skylight.
While the original idea is not tragically unsound( prevent people from being involuntarily exposed to unwanted nudity), it really is best to deal with it via laws restricting particular extremes rather than attempting to create a general principle out of it. You can see the logical consequences of that when it is united with America’s ridiculous tort system to ensure that nude housewives everywhere are properly punished for idiots that fall off of ladders.
I think, Tim, that you and I might disagree on just about every imaginable topic.
While I am certainly no fan of accidentally seeing ugly naked people, how the hell can anybody think it’s o.k. to regulate what people wear or don’t wear inside their own homes?[/quote]
Do you feel the need to make an argument out of everything, even anecdotal obversations? Boy are you cranky :).
I didn’t say it was ok, I said I had some sympathy. That said, if someone has a window onto the world that can be seen by everyone, including children, I don’t want them doing things in that window that they wouldn’t be able to get away with in the street or park. Exposing yourself to people, especially children, is a crime. I can freely masturbate in the comfort of my own home, but should I be able to masturbate standing in a window where every passing man, woman and child can see me clearly? Why should one be able to get away with it just because you do so from behind the safety of a window?
I don’t agree with legislating what people can and can’t do in their own home, but I also don’t agree that people should be able to stand naked, masturbate, engage in anal sex, etc. in the window of their homes under the gaze of passing children. Do you?
Ah, the old public private barrier coming up once again.
My position is that really, if the behavior was so disturbing, why did you continue to look at it? I mean, nobody is forcing anybody to look into the windows of private homes.
Yeah no question.
My point was just that we have this too essentially. Just without the jail time.
:P
To play DA: is the text of the law available anywhere? I’d bet money it’s written to only apply to people standing in front of the windows, like mentioned.
For the record as well: this article was about a city in Mexico, folks. They aren’t exactly known as a bastion of freedom and citizens rights. :P
No I’m strictly in favor of missionary in front of their windows.
[quote=“Ryan Akiyama”]
No I’m strictly in favor of missionary in front of their windows.[/quote]
That’s a reasonable standard.