RE: meeting notes and announcements

["Saundra Lund" <sslund@moscow.com>]

Hmmm . . . well, I think New York might be the *third* most populous
state (with California being first and Texas being second):
http://eire.census.gov/popest/data/states/populartables/table01.php

But, according to:
http://www.tera.ca/
(WARNING:  please don't visit the above site if you personally belong to
the group of those who find topfree people offensive)
neither Texas in general (can you believe it!) nor Austin specifically
have laws *against* topfree women.

So, if I'm correctly understanding, we've got the second and third most
populous states *not* criminalizing women going topfree.  I think that
works out to about 14% of our population residing in states that
*haven't* found it necessary to criminalize female breasts.

Perhaps we should include Idaho there because our state, in its infinite
wisdom, has no law at the state level criminalizing female breasts,
either?  Sorry, I don't know about other states . . . or about local
ordinances within the various states.

Seems to me we should make a legal distinction between the simple
existence of female bare breasts *and* bare female breasts being used
for sexual and/or commercial purposes.  IMHO, that's what our community
needs to do.  Another acceptable alternative would be equal opportunity
and protection:  apply legal sanctions to females *and* males who show
bare chests in public (naturally, with a legally exception for
breastfeeding) or remove legal sanctions for males *and* females who
show bare chests in public.

Don't know if this answers your question, Mr. Strand, but I hope it
helps :-)


Saundra Lund
Moscow, Idaho

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to
do nothing.
Edmund Burke

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Strand [mailto:strand@pacsim.com] 
Sent: Friday, August 09, 2002 11:06 AM
To: 'Muscovites for Equal Rights'; vision2020@moscow.com
Subject: RE: meeting notes and announcements 


As an engineer that uses statistics on a daily basis I found the
information from "Muscovites for Equal Rights" to be interesting:

"Women can go topless almost everywhere in the second most populous
state."

That really doesn't tell me much. Does this mean there are places in New
York with ordinances against going topless? Then what about the first
most populous state? Just guessing at numbers, this statement suggests
that 3 or 4 percent of the women in the US can go topless without fear
of being cited (at least directly - there are possibly other ordinances
they fall under that restrict this activity). How about the other 97%?

I'm curious as to how "different" we are from mainstream America in the
fact we have enacted this ordinance. Please don't misconstrue this as a
belief that Moscow should be the same as the rest of America. I just
believe in seeing the entire picture rather than a small part. Anybody
have any info on this?

Thanks

Bill Strand