Where Have All the Playboys Gone?

Christmas is difficult for me. It's not that I'm a latter-day Scrooge, but I have a large imagination gap. Usually I put off Christmas shopping until the last day or so, then troll the mall frantically in search of inspiration.

This year was no exception.

Books provide handy solutions for the imagination-challenged. So naturally I checked out the stock at the B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks outlets at my favorite mall. I also checked the magazine racks while I was at it.

It appeared that B. Dalton's no longer carries Playboy, Hugh Hefner's famous (notorious?) entertainment for men. Waldenbooks offered it for sale in an opaque wrapper that conveyed the message, forbidden fruit inside. Flipping through the pages to decide whether to buy wasn't an option. It was take it or leave it--buyer beware.

Time was when you could peruse Playboy at any B. Dalton's, Waldenbooks (or even 7-11 store) in the country. What happened? What forced the policy changes at these the outlets? To be sure, the contemporary version of Playboy tends to be less coy about the female anatomy than 25-30 years ago. But the content really hasn't changed that much. Hugh Hefner still imagines himself the life of his lavish parties, though he now comes across more as a pathetic old man. However along with the usual airbrushed cuties, the magazine often runs interesting articles with a pragmatic, libertarian flavor. They're worth pondering; I enjoy reading them in the barber shop. (Yeah, I know. You're rolling your eyes and thinking, "Here's another guy who claims he's only interested in the articles.")

The economic censorship that drove Playboy underground (or at least behind shrink -wrap) resulted from pressure in the 1990s from the likes of Focus on the Family's James Dobson and the American Family Association's Donald Wildmon. They threatened boycotts of the 7-11s and the large bookseller chains that refused to make "adult" magazines inaccessible to minors. They claimed these magazines were harmful to kids; at least this was their public position. However the changes they forced denied the rest of us the opportunity to make informed purchase decisions. How many times do you buy a magazine at a newsstand without looking through it first? I can't speak for anyone else, but I seldom do. Thus, one suspects that the mantra of "protect the children" was a smoke screen for a subtler agenda.

Wichita Naturist Mike Jan reported recently that the Wichita city council debated (and finally passed) an anti-nudity ordinance aimed at sexually -oriented nightclubs. Mike spoke eloquently in opposition to the ordinance from the Naturist perspective, in the process garnering a good deal of favorable press. He argued that it was overbroad because it might affect Naturist activities such as swims at rented public pools. Some council members even admitted that he might have a point. But this didn't stop them. Horror stories about harmful effects of adult businesses promulgated by the so-called "Community Defense Counsel" [sic] (www.communitydefense.org), formerly called the National Family Legal Foundation, evidently won the day. (Where were all the cowboys?)

In the early 1990s Kansas City experienced a "decency" campaign led by skillful propagandist Chris Cooper and his Coalition Against Pornography. (Shades of Anthony Comstock.) We saw strategically placed sensational billboards counseling us that "Pornography Destroys." Cooper succeeded in shaming or coercing most of the mom and pop video stores in the area into dropping their adult videos under threat of litigation or boycott. Once he'd minimized the availability of adult videos he turned his attention to cabarets. As he hadn't counted on the emergence of "juice bars" that featured nude female dancers minus alcoholic beverages, things got interesting for awhile. Several of the municipalities in the greater Kansas City area passed "not in my back yard" anti-nudity ordinances in response to sensational press articles decrying the "threat" of juice bars. (In a couple of instances these ordinances have snared Naturists in their web.)

In January 1993, after it became apparent that the juice bars might become too popular, a legislator from Platte County decided that enough was enough and introduced a bill in the Missouri legislature to make public nudity a felony. It was reported that the following week or so Baptist churches across Missouri generated 10,000 postcards in support of the bill. (Naturists and other interested parties spent a good deal of time, energy and treasure to defeat that bill.)

In December, 1993 Olathe School District Superintendent Ron Wimmer ordered that copies of the award-winning book Annie On My Mind be removed from the school libraries because in dealt with a lesbian theme. (The American Library Association voted Annie the Best Book in 1982.) The American Civil Liberties Union sued the school district and, in 1995 won a $400,000 judgment.

In the summer of 1998 a preacher from Independence launched a one-man decency assault on Barnes and Noble outlets in the metropolitan area, ripping up copies of photo anthologies by Naturist photographer Jock Sturges. He claimed that the books were child pornography. Similar attacks occurred at Barnes & Noble outlets in several other cities around the country. Fundamentalist pop-psychologist James Dobson was the probable catalyst for these attacks. Though the Independence preacher received a fine for his actions, the damage was done. Barnes & Noble started shrink-wrapping the Sturges books (as well as the Naturist magazines they carried).

In January 1999, Shawnee preacher Phil Ellsworth demanded that the Shawnee-Mission School district cease showing the acclaimed video Romeo and Juliet because it showed 20 seconds of male buttocks and 4 seconds of female breast. Without having seen it, he claimed that the film was pornographic. Although the school district refused Ellsworth's request, they also failed to back English teacher Tim Thornburg (who showed the film) and the latter eventually resigned.

This past summer the Kansas Board of Education, at the urging of fundamentalist Linda Holloway, the board's chair, voted to de-emphasize evolution and the big-bang theory as part of the state's science curriculum standards. More specifically, they left local school districts the option of teaching so-called "creation science" as an alternative "theory." The board collectively adopted the position that it's only fair to allow students equal access to various theories of how the earth was formed. How much more democratic can you get? (I'll spare the many details that show why "creation science" constitutes bad science). If the board's current policy persists past the elections next year, look for there to be increasing Phil Ellsworth-type pressure on local school boards to dilute or eliminate those aspects of their science curricula that religious activists dislike. (I note without comment that Linda Holloway attends Phil Ellsworth's church.)

The list of these incidents, both local and national, seems endless. While I'm inclined to dismiss most conspiracy theories as products of fertile imaginations I can't do so with the "culture war" that religious activists have waged to restrict pluralism, civil liberties and individual choice during the past two decades. Nor do I think their efforts are entirely unrelated to the millennium event.

Apocalyptic predictions have been around for a long time. Nevertheless Y2K presents an important and highly visible benchmark for those who interpret the Bible (or at least the portions that suit their leaders' agendas) literally. I still recall a lecture in the History of Western Civilization course I took as a college freshman in 1960. Midway through the first semester we discussed the first millennium. The turn of the calendar represented a period of great fear and uncertainty in Europe. Many believed that the apocalypse was at hand and the world was about to end. This didn't happen, of course. The lecturer pointed out that the result was a gradual re-thinking of fundamental premises, leading eventually to the renaissance and the rise of the scientific method. Then he made a remarkable comment, "Wait until the approach of the next millennium. All sorts of strange things will happen."

So where HAVE all the Playboys gone? The great cultural clash that we've witnessed during the past two decades involves values rooted in tradition and absolutes on the one hand, and on the implications of the knowledge explosion and the application of the scientific method (including to the social sciences) on the other. Those who accept the absolutist view have witnessed one after another of the beliefs they accept as self-evident disproved or contradicted. Unable to win the public over to their views in the marketplace of ideas, they have resorted to economic and legislative coercion. To effect the latter they have counted on the apathy of the voting public. Rather than promote their candidacy openly they run as "stealth" candidates, blitzing churches but otherwise remaining virtually invisible. Linda Holloway was a good example of a stealth candidate. She provided local media only minimal information about her views and positions, but these were obvious if one read between the lines.

Robert Scott, a publisher of amateur erotica videos in the St. Louis area, offers the following concerning his business, "Christian fundamentalists understand that we, the adult industry, represent the greatest threat to their longterm survival.

"We aren't threatening them consciously, of course. We aren't instigating the burning of churches or urging people to boycott religion. But what we are doing is showing that sex between consenting adults is wonderful, exciting, and, when pursued responsibly, without negative consequences. Or, to put it more simply, sex is fun and it feels great--we know it, and we show it. The first time a young adult sees a sex video and discovers this for himself, it casts a shadow on everything that the church has been saying. 'The church tells me that sex is dangerous, dirty, and shameful... yet I have found that it is not,' says he. 'What else are they lying about?' "

While we might forgive Scott for a certain amount of hyperbole and overstatement, his point is well-taken and is applicable to other areas as well. Consider the Board of Education decision concerning evolution and the big-bang theory. People with even a modicum of training in the scientific method understand that, in an absolute sense, no theory can ever be proven. Theories provide unifying frameworks that serve to generate hypotheses to test. In a hypothesis test one (almost) never proves; the best one can do is disprove, and even then one accepts a small pre-determined probability of error. But when one uses a theory to generate dozens or hundreds of research hypotheses and fails to disconfirm any of them, this lends great credibility to the theory. Conversely, rejection of an important hypothesis based on a theory signals structural problems with the theory and the need for revision of the model.

The scientific method often is used to choose among competing theories and explanations as well. Recall the debate over "cold fusion" several years ago. Two researchers claimed that they'd found a way to create a nuclear fusion reaction without the intense heat that this process otherwise requires. This would have been a startling breakthrough had it been true. But there were skeptics. The physics just didn't seem right. The researchers failed to rule out the possibility that a chemical reaction might produce the effects they observed. Indeed independent experiments showed this to be the case.

The conservative members of the Board of Education demonstrated little appreciation for the kind of tedious work that's involved in building the case for a scientific theory. Basically all they saw was that the evolution model threatened their religious beliefs because it contradicted them. It's not difficult for those of a legalistic bent (as creationists often are) to criticize any scientific theory. (In fact, scientists do it all the time. The scientific method explicitly accommodates and encourages this kind of self-criticism.) So, the board voted to allow the questions of origins and cosmology to be based on the political process at the local level rather than on the informed consensus of the scientific community. Given the low turnout in board elections, this increases the likelihood that local school boards will be pressured into accommodating what amounts to junk science.

Ideas that contradict deeply-held beliefs can be dangerous, hence the urge to suppress or restrict them. This is what has happened with the Playboys, the gay-theme books and the adult videos. Suppression has proved more difficult with things like evolution; direct attempts to ban evolution from school curricula would invite immediate lawsuits. But it appears that the current Kansas science standards permit an end-run, at least for private and religious schools and home-schoolers. Since macro-evolution and big-bang aren't part of the testing standards, it follows that they won't be part of the accreditation standards either. Hence private-sector schools can omit discussion of these topics or tailor the presentation of them to suit other school agendas, without loss of status.

The same urge to suppress has been applied to Naturist pursuits as well. During 1999 Naturists suffered some important losses, including the loss of a premier nude beach in Hawaii and the passage of an anti-nudity law in New Jersey. (The impetus behind the latter may have been real-estate greed, but supporters of the measure certainly played the ideology card.) In Wisconsin, there is pending anti-nudity legislation directly aimed at closing Mazo Beach, a nude beach with a long tradition. The catalyst behind this was Ralph Ovadal, a fundamentalist preacher with views similar to those of Fred Phelps.

In fact, I'm surprised that Naturists haven't been targeted even more vigorously than we have been. This may be because Naturist supporters are a very small, low-profile minority, particularly in the Midwest. Basically we don't want to be hassled, therefore we tend to keep a low profile. We welcome all who have a sincere interest in what we do and what we represent, and who are willing to accept our standards of conduct. But if nude bathing were to become popular at public beaches and parks, you can bet that vigorous attempts to suppress would not be far behind.

The reason is simple: to most of our textile neighbors, nudity (both ours and theirs) is frightening, except within narrowly-defined cultural contexts. While the causes of this "collective unconscious" mindset (to paraphrase Karl Jung) are numerous and complicated, arguably they trace back to a literal interpretation of the Genesis tale. In my readings I've found 3 or 4 different interpretations of the Adam and Eve myth. But the one that informs the vocal fundamentalists probably goes something like this: Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, this opened their eyes and they realized they were naked. Nakedness thus became the visible manifestation of (or metaphor for) our sinful (animal?) nature. For this reason we (must) cover our nakedness.

This is a handy western explanation for why we wear clothes. Counter-arguments that other cultures have different viewpoints (there are lots of nude beaches in Europe, naked aboriginals seem to enjoy perfectly well-adjusted, happy lives, etc.) don't pass muster.

Personally, I can't see how one can be a Naturist without being on the progressive/scientific side of the great cultural debate of the 1990s. The progressive/ scientific view goes roughly like this: (1) The Adam-Eve sequence is exactly backward. The base case of the human zygote is female. Males develop in the embryo stage because of a massive dose of testosterone usually (but not always) triggered by the X-Y chromosome structure. No testosterone, no male. (2) The DNA sequence of the human is about 98% identical to that of the bonobo chimpanzee, lending strong support to the evolution argument. (3) The best anthropological and biological evidence we have to date suggests that humans evolved from a common female ancestor ("Lucy") about 4 million years ago in Africa. Human populations were forced to leave the forests and to forage in the grasslands as a result of changing climatic conditions. This, along with natural selection, explains both our bipedal characteristics and our hairless condition. (These gave us a competitive advantage as grassland hunters.) (4) For most of our 4-million year heritage we wore no clothes. We didn't need them in the warm climate of tropical and sub-tropical Africa. From an evolutionary viewpoint, our natural state is nude. Clothes are a relatively recent development for protection and adornment, as human populations migrated to colder climates. (As an expert on nude hiking, I can affirm that clothes are unnecessary and perhaps even undesirable above freezing, as long as one keeps moving.) (5) A possible explanation for our interest in recreational sex is that it strengthens the pair-bond. Humans share with a few other species a phenomenon called neoteny, i.e. our young are born structurally immature. This is due to the accommodation of the female pelvis to the upright walking position. Thus, our young take a long time to mature. The pair-bond provides the competitive advantage necessary to ensure survival of our young. So sex provides a two-fold advantage.

To the extent that the Naturist world-view puts us in the progressive/scientific camp, it's unsurprising that we fall under the same cross-hairs as homosexuals, nude cabaret dancers, pornographers, abortion providers, sex educators, evolution and big-bang supporters, etc. Those who believe God's history has already been written would rather that we'd all accept their views or go away (either willingly or, if necessary, by force). We represent a dangerous, uncontrolled rabble that threatens their tidy medieval world-view.

Who knows, despite all the facts and research to the contrary maybe they're right. Maybe the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse will soon ride through and knock down all but the elect. But I wouldn't be willing to bet on it. On the other hand, maybe when we get past Y2K some of the millennial madness will begin to subside and our culture once again will begin to favor the rule of reason. Let's hope so.

Have a Happy Millennium.