| |
Drop the gay hang-up about nudism: let’s live and let live
• ROBERT Sutherland Smith defends the confinement of nude sunbathers to a small, cramped enclosure within the changing area at the men’s pond on Hampstead Heath (Letters, June 11 ).
He repeatedly makes a big issue of the fact that many gay men swim and sunbathe there. What has people’s sexuality got to do with it? Why keep stressing gay, gay, gay?
Mr Smith’s professed concern about the health dangers of sunbathing are touching but patronising. I notice that he is not campaigning for a nationwide ban on sunbathing. Surely it is up to individuals to make their own risk assessment and either limit their sun exposure or use sun-block?
Let’s please go back to square one. Until the early 1990s, the whole changing area was happily used as a combined nude and clothed sunbathing area by people of all sexualities. It worked then, why not now?
In those happier days, when I lived nearby, I was a frequent attendee.
Gay men, orthodox Jews and straight body builders all mixed amicably together – with the exception of a tiny handful of illiberal straight men, some of whom seemed determined to force out gay men. Since nude sunbathing was particularly popular among the gays, they thought they could achieve this goal by banning naked sunbathing.
They pressured the Heath authorities to hold a consultation exercise.
The results were overwhelmingly in favour of allowing nudism. Despite this result, Heath officials responded by overriding the democratic vote and banning nude sunbathing in nearly two-thirds of the changing area. People without clothes were confined to the present small, fenced-off enclosure within the changing area. A vociferous, mostly homophobic, minority was allowed to dictate to the majority. And so it has remained ever since.
Why can’t we get back the old days, when the whole men’s changing area was clothing optional? Why can’t gay, straight, bisexual and celibate men – with and without swimsuits – all share the men’s pond in a spirit of live and let live?
PETER TATCHELL
OutRage!
PO Box 17816
SW14
|
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
