What could be more joyful than making use of a late night opportunity of one of Boulder’s warmest Halloweens in decades and a festive atmosphere among one’s friends and community that, were not only _not_ offended, but _encouraging_? I remember songs in the 70s written happily about streaking and the nationwide streaker ‘craze’. Now 30 years later, young people in the US are being punished for feeling comfortable in their own skin.

There is no link between nudity and sexual violence, in fact a number of studies have found the opposite (some examples:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is_3_45/ai_n29470396
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n57661w32461t664/ ),
so I’m even more surprised to see, in an educated population like Boulder’s, such a law linking nudity and sexual offense and to see such intolerance.

Among western countries (including the Catholic ones), which have grown more accepting and tolerant towards nudity in time, the US is strongly an outlier growing in the opposite direction. So I’m not surprised the that charges were not dropped and so much attention to plea-bargaining the charges down. However, I’m very disappointed.

However, saying nothing about abuse of official power carries an even greater risk — in fact, a virtual certainty — that abuse of official power will increase.

In my own case, on this blog, I haven’t published the names of the cited streakers — because I don’t want to contribute directly to making their names findable on that front via search engines. The Daily Camera and Colorado Daily did publish their names — which is their general policy for criminal citations of adults, but which can carry significant findability consequences. (Something I wish news orgs would consider more carefully.)

At this point, the fate of the cited runners is in the hands of the District Attorney. The DA is offering them plea bargains that would not carry mandatory sex offender registration, so it looks unlikely that the publicity thus far has hurt their cases — and it may even have helped.

- Amy Gahran

Even worse, the publicity associated with this case already is threatening to do this.