By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
L.A. Williams
Christian Action League
February 7, 2013
Attention, women of North Carolina, in case you didn’t know, your breasts are considered private parts, so please keep a shirt on.
That’s the gist of a bill filed recently to clarify exactly what “indecent exposure” means and put a stop to gatherings such as the GoTopless Rally, an annual event that has drawn a few thousand people to Asheville in the last two years to parade around naked from the waist up and demand “equal treatment” of men and women.
“We have taken the sacred tenant of ‘equality’ and turned it into an absurdity,“ said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League.
“When the Founders spoke of equality in the Declaration of Independence, when they argued for equal treatment under the law in the Constitution, they didn’t mean that everything we do should be of equal significance, nor that we should erase the differences in the roles of the sexes ordered by nature’s God,” he said. “Their emphasis was on the dignity of mankind – all men are of equal significance to God – all are made in His image. Therefore, all people, regardless of station, whether rich or poor, whether man or woman, no matter their race, their God-given rights to life, liberty, and property should be zealously protected by the state.
“In no way did they mean to convey that homosexuals have a right to marriage, or women have a right to combat, or that women have a right to bare their breasts in public.”
He said such so-called “rights” infringe upon common decency and common sense.
“It stirs within my heart a righteous indignation to see the blessed concept of ‘equality’ profaned in this manner,” he added.
Filed by Rep. Tim Moffat (R-Buncombe), House Bill 34 would simply add a paragraph to the state’s indecent exposure statue defining “private” body parts as “external organs of sex and of excretion, including the nipple, or any portion of the areola, of the human female breast.” It expressly exempts women during breastfeeding.
Moffitt told the Asheville Citizen-Times that the bill was in response to the GoTopless rallies and that he is optimistic it will be approved as early as this month. It has been referred to Judiciary Subcommittee C of which fellow primary bill sponsor Rep. Rayne Brown (R-Davidson) is a member.
Asheville Mayor Terry Bellamy and the City Council had asked lawmakers and the League of Municipalities to take on the issue and craft a statewide solution as they feared a city ordinance banning female breast baring would be challenged as contradictory to state law and therefore unenforceable. Bellamy told the media she hopes the proposed law will send a message to the Alabama organizer of last year’s GoTopless event that “he can’t come to North Carolina and play games in this manner.”
Huntsville resident Jeff Johnson has compared his quest to allow women to go topless to the Civil Rights Movement. He said he chose Asheville for the rally because people there are “enlightened” and don’t have laws against it like they do in Alabama and many other states.
According to the national GoTopless organization, North Carolina is one of 33 states that does not currently have laws against women going topless. Another 14 states have laws that are ambiguous, while Utah, Indiana and Tennessee have specific bans on women baring their breasts.
GoTopless is affiliated with the Raelian movement, which is led by UFO cult messiah Claude Vorilhon (now called Rael), a former journalist and race car driver in France who claims to have encountered extra-terrestrials in 1973 and later to have been taken to their planet.
To find out more about House Bill 34, click here