Continued Fight to Protect Rights!
I want to welcome you to this January issue of The Bulletin, dedicated to what AANR does for you and the efforts of your Government Affairs Team (GAT). During the past year, we had huge successes in fighting to protect nude use across the United States. We also helped with proposed Canadian efforts. It seems Canada is more tolerant of nudists on public lands than in the United States. Our stepped-up lobbying efforts paid off and your support was essential to that success. Through dues and direct contributions to the GAT Fund we had enough to fight off the attacks in 2024, now we need to make that same effort for 2025. Your support is critical to having the lobbying funds we need to fight for your nudist rights.
Our bill analysis software is through State Net and provides a lot more information than our previous vendor. We have fielded a lot more bills because of our ability to search keywords that occur in antinudity laws. They also appear in laws not related or intended to be related to nudity. Our efforts many times are to bring the possible repercussions of a proposed law to the nudist community. We work with lawmakers and policy writers to make sure we are protected from overly broad language in these bills and regulations. Too often a bill is used against the nudist community that was meant to be used to stop prostitution or exploitation of minors. The general public seems to still be suffering from the puritan ethic of nude is lewd and nudity must be related to sex. We educate lawmakers and others that this perception is false. It is an ongoing effort.
These last two years lawmakers have been coming up with new phrases to redefine materials they find offensive. Terms that have common meanings in law are being abandoned by the lawmakers’ new phrases like “child exploitation materials”. There is no legal definition of these new terms while sexually oriented materials is clearly understood. The rationale is they can cast a bigger net of control if they don’t have a clear definition of what is not allowed or what is considered detrimental to minors. We fight this change and ask for a return to legally defined terms. This protects us from having someone say The Bulletin, for example, should be considered child exploitation materials, because children have been pictured in it. The situation where nudity is displayed needs to be protected from trying to lump it in with pornography. This challenge is ongoing.
In this issue, you will read articles from other members of the GAT team as well as other AANR members who have faced the challenges of protecting nudist freedom in the past and see AANR as the organization that continues to fight to protect those rights.
-Tim Mullins
Government Affairs Chair
