Nudity is legal is Burlington, Vermont, with a few (very few) qualifications. It is illegal to be naked in City Hall Park. (The reason for this is unclear, but said park is the summertime lounge spot for folks with white-people dreadlocks and dog-on-a-rope. I’m guessing that has something to do with it.) It is illegal to be naked if one is inebriated by alcohol or drugs. It is illegal to GET naked in public. One can BE naked in Burlington, but one must remove one’s clothes in private. Go figure.

A few years ago, the Shriners in their little cars were putting on a show on Church Street, our pedestrian (except for little Shrine cars) shopping area on a warm Saturday afternoon. Suddenly, there was a naked man jogging along beside them. The police pulled the man off to the side, ascertained that he was not inebriated and released him to continue giving the Shriners heartburn.

That’s the last public nudity I’ve heard about in these parts. The college students are alleged to conduct a late-night naked bike ride at the end of every spring term, but I’ve never witnessed it. Down in Brattleboro, one marks the changing of the seasons with the sighting of the first naked person in spring and the last in autumn.

So, the bottom line is: you CAN get naked in various Vermont municipalities, but SHOULD you? It’s an aesthetic question, I suppose; I leave it to those whose sensibilities are more refined than mine.

This has been on my mind because the larger topic of “You CAN, but SHOULD you?” has been rolling around for the past few weeks. It was all started by the fuss (which continues) over Park51, the Islamic Community Center in Manhattan, just a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center bombings. People opposing Park51 at first called for its construction to be disallowed. Then, when they were reminded that this Constitution thing is still around, they shifted their argument to “Well sure, they CAN build it, but SHOULD they?” Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich and Abe Foxman and a bunch of other think, “No, they shouldn’t.”

Now comes the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, which is planning an “International Burn a Koran Day” for Saturday, September 11. Although the Dove Center is a church, what they are planning to do falls (in my mind) under the heading of political speech, which is protected by the same First Amendment that protects freedom of religion.

So, it’s pretty clear, if the Florida congregation wants to burn Korans, they CAN. SHOULD they? I’d say no. General David Petraeus, commander of US troops in Afghanistan would say no. He says it will endanger the lives of US and other western soldiers there by needlessly arousing the local population which is Muslim. News reports says US patrols are being stoned as a result of the planned Koran burning.

On the other hand, Gen. Petraeus and his troops are in Afghanistan – we’re told – to help protect those freedoms we enjoy as Americans, including the freedom to be as jackass stupid as those folks in Gainesville. Even many of the right-wing pundit class saying Park51 can but shouldn’t be built are urging the Floridians to knock it off with the matches and holy books.

(BTW, fifty congregants attend the Dove Center, which makes obvious that terms like “World Outreach Center” and “International Burn a Koran Day” are merely cries for attention.)

To be clear, there’s no comparison (aside from the CAN and SHOULD question) between Park51 and the Dove Center. The Manhattan community center project is about tolerance and bringing people together. The Koran burning is about ignorance and hatred. Both, however, are protected by the First Amendment. To banish the Koran burners is to imperil the community center builders, not just in this instance, but in all such instances.

Thomas Jefferson said it best: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesom discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

AND ANOTHER THING

About that grape juice I wrote about last week. Stains something awful. I’d keep it away from the parlor carpet if I were you.

© Mark Floegel, 2010