Naturist Freedom - Miss Naturist Freedom _TOP_

Despite constitutional guarantees, freedoms of speech and the press are severely restricted. The state controls major media outlets and related facilities, and state-run television has aired "documentaries" that smear perceived opponents of the government. Although official censorship was abolished in 2002, it has continued through semiofficial mechanisms that strongly encourage self-censorship. Foreign reporters are generally excluded from the country.

The government reportedly limits academic freedom. Bribes are commonly required to gain entrance to exclusive universities and obtain good grades. Open and free private discussion is limited by the mahalla committees, traditional neighborhood organizations that the government has turned into an official system for public surveillance and control.

Despite constitutional provisions for freedom of assembly, authorities severely restrict this right in practice, breaking up virtually all unsanctioned gatherings and detaining participants. In January 2013, Valeriy Nazarov, a Birdamlik activist who had planned to travel to Tashkent for a protest event, was reported missing for a month. He reappeared after fellow Birdamlik activists drew media attention to his case. According to his friends, he arrived home drugged and disoriented. Birdamlik members suspected that he had been held in the Urganch Psychiatric Hospital.

The O'Brien test is appropriately utilized where "speech" and "nonspeech" elements are combined in the same course of conduct. O'Brien was arrested for burning his draft card on the steps of a Boston courthouse before a large crowd. See id. at 369, 88 S. Ct. 1673. The law under which O'Brien was indicted prohibited the wilful and knowing mutilation of draft cards. See id. at 370, 88 S. Ct. 1673. O'Brien argued that the burning of his draft card constituted protected "symbolic speech;" thus, the law prohibiting the destruction of draft cards unconstitutionally interfered with his First Amendment freedom of expression. See id. The Court rejected O'Brien's argument that the First Amendment protects all modes of communication of ideas by conduct, stating:

Id. at 376, 88 S. Ct. 1673. The O'Brien Court then enunciated a four-part test to *1337 determine whether a government regulation which incidentally limits First Amendment freedoms is sufficiently justified.[6]

Finally, the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest. The Ordinance's implicit requirement that nude dancers wear a scant amount of clothing has been approved as the "bare minimum" necessary to achieve the government's purpose. See Barnes, 501 U.S. at 572, 111 S. Ct. 2456. Because the definition of "nude" in the Ordinance is worded virtually identically to the definition of "nudity" in the Indiana statute construed in Barnes, the rationale of Barnes with respect to O'Brien's fourth prong applies in the case at bar. Accordingly, the Court finds that section 26-26 of the Orange County Code constitutionally regulates the conduct of public nudity, despite its incidental limitations on some expressive activity. Therefore, Gatena's First Amendment challenge to the Ordinance fails.

[6] Under the four-part test, a government regulation is sufficiently justified: 1) if it is within the constitutional power of the Government; 2) if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; 3) if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and 4) if the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest. See id. at 367, 88 S. Ct. 1673.

But before returning to what is at issue in our disagreement, let me say a bit more about what Sartre has meant to me. I pointed out that in recent years Sartre has not figured much in what I have written. That was not always so. Being and Nothingness thus figured importantly in my dissertation on nihilism, (3) which located the origin of nihilism in the inability of freedom to bind itself. Is there anything in experience that provides a transcendent guarantee of values, other than the subject itself? 2b1af7f3a8