Dear Michael
The election is finally over.
While most coverage naturally emphasized the presidential race, of interest to naturists in Florida are the new Florida state legislators, as many will have little or very skewed information on naturism. A key ingredient in SFFB's government affairs program is presenting our viewpoints and interests as citizens to our representatives, as they may shortly be called to vote on bills that affect us.
What needs to be remembered in this context is that this is not a question of labels, of Democrats and Republicans, of conservatives and liberals. All politics are ultimately personal, and the naturist message can be presented in either liberal or conservative (i.e. liberatarian) terms.
It's often difficult to accertain why people decide to associate certain labels with themselves.
Indeed, perhaps, most of these labels include vain attitudes and suppositions that we would perhaps be ashamed to acknowledge in more rational, more thoughtful, more sympathetic moments.
Any mindset that ties naturism to any political viewpoint is probably counterproductive. To most naturists, naturism means freedom. This freedom may be conceived as a liberal freedom from biased "majoritarian" societal presumptions, or as a libertarian freedom from the undue interference of government in the choices of individual citizens.
The commonality of both these viewpoints is in this elusive word "freedom". Either viewpoint seems to accord with James Madison's concerns about protecting minority rights from the "tyranny of the majority", as expressed in a letter to Thomas Jefferson shortly before the adoption of the current Constitution of the United States of America. And what is freedom? "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
The election of our first African-American president may be seen as a turning point in our history. It's fair to say that neither Madison nor Jefferson, no matter how we might honor them as founders of our democracy, could ever conceive of this eventuality; that, probably, they could never conceive of people with black skins being a legitimate minority, or of a black man as being capable of leading our country.
This is not a criticism of Madison or Jefferson, but an acknowlegement of their cultural biases and preconceptions, and a recognition on how far we've come today.
This comment is not intended as an affront to the supporters of John McCain. It is not intended to be devisive. It is not a commentary on the capabilities of either Obama or McCain. It is not a commentary on the issues of the election.
Rather, this comment may be an awakening call for naturists. Prejudice, presumption and unexamined stereotypes are hard to overcome; yet with time, persistence and conviction, they may be.
The frustration of women executive assistants training future male managers that will pull down a salary twice or thrice theirs; the agony of long-term committed gay couples denied the priviledges of heterosexual couples married just last week; the signs seen fifty years ago, "No Jews welcome"...not in Germany, but in Wisconsin and Minnesota...gradually, we put these tribal distinctions behind us.
It's up to white naturists, to black naturists, to naturists of other variegated colors, to straight naturists, to gay naturists, to pursue the illusion. Naturism, we hope, can sublimate these sometimes divisive adjectives of division into one common substantive concept of humanity, like an alchemist seeking to transmute dross into gold, to find the philosopher's stone that will transmute our transitory concerns into eternal meaning...or at least to some meaning that perhaps we may find comfort with for the moment, which perhaps is all that we can expect.
Naturism certainly is not the whole answer. Yet it is an acknowlegdement of our precarious physical selves, as we try to extrapolate them into some longing yet vague spiritual meaning. As naturism can recognize this fragility of our corporal and spiritual reality, it can bring us closer together in our own confusion and seeking. Or so one would hope.
There are, of course, no guarantees.
"And we are all as on a darkling plane,
swept with confused alarums of struggle and flight,
where ignorant armies clash by night."
-- Matthew Arnold
