Nude Beach! Key West
First, today, congratulations to Fantasy Fest Queen Vicki Gordon and King Ralph Garcia, for raising the most money for AIDS Help. Key West’s biggest celebration, by far, Fantasy Fest was started by local gays.
I “chanced” to have a discussion over breakfast at Harpoon Harry’s with a fellow who said he had known the city commisisoner who, maybe in 1983, had ramrodded the anti-nudity ordinance, still in effect, which, I said, looks like it was written by someone who had never studied the law. I also said the righteous city commissionner had owned a plumbing contracting company and had used thinly clad, if at all clad, women on his business cards to attract business. The fellow at breakfast said when that city commisisoner ran for reelection, when asked at a candidate forum hosted by the Key West Business Guild, which was started by local gays, what he would do about trying to help people with AIDS. Would he support something like AIDS Help. He said he wouldn’t do anything about AIDS; it was something God was doing to punish gays. The father of our anti-nudity ordinance.
Over lunch yesterday with a bunch of local attorneys and a local business man, I was teased that when Pastor Ernie De Loach, of Glad Tidings Tabernacle Church, comes out against Key West having a nude beach, that will be the end of it. Pastor Ernie is one of the best known and liked ministers in Key West. His church reminded me, from my attendance of services there, of a very conservative Pentecostal church. I smiled at the smug lawyer, said, Pastor Ernie had told Sandy and Nick Downs, who were in his parish, that he didn’t see anything wrong with a nude beach or with the ads Sandy had dreamed up and ran for my mayoral campaign on her dime in Key West the Newspaper, the most “famous” of which ads begins this post.
It was crystal clear at the recent city commission workshop that new Commissioner Billy Wardlow is strenuously opposed to designating any of our city beaches clothing-optional. When Billy leaned on our new Mayor Craig Cates, saying he represented Billy’s voting district, meaning, he should honor the objections of Billy’s constituents to a clothing optional beach, Craig replied that he represented all voting districts in Key West. I came away from the workshop convinced Billy will do whatever he can to defeat Key West having a clothing optional beach and he might not be very nice about it. Therefore, I advise Billy, and everyone in Key West who feels the way he does, to seek Pastor Ernie’s sage counsel. And if they come away not liking what they hear, then they might seek the counsel of two other well known and liked local ministers, Father Stephen Braddock and Rev. Joe McMurray.
I also suggest to Billy and the other commissioners, who have told us about constituents telling them they don’t want a nude beach, that they start telling those people to come to the next city commission workshop on a clothing optional beach and tell the commissioners and mayor and the rest of us who they are and why they object. I am not alone in being fed up with officials announcing from the dais that they are hearing a lot of objection from locals to Key West having a clothing optional beach, but no locals ever show up at or write letters to be read at city commission meetings, saying they object. Who are these people? Why don’t they come out of the closet and show their faces?
Another thing I probably should cover today is Commissioner Teri Johnston’s comment at the workshop about her and the other commissioners and our former mayor being inundated with objecting emails from people outside Key West and outside the Keys. Teri said it was some sort of organization behind it. Some sort of organization named The American Decency Association, headquartered in Somewhere, Michigan.
On learning of Key West considering a clothing optional beach, ADA’s fearless self-appointed leader sent out a mass email to his organization’s members, requesting money for an ADA crusade to save Key West from the infidels, along with a request for mass emailings to our then mayor and city commissioners threatening to never come to Key West if it got a nude beach. I hazard a wild guess and say the fearless leader and probably none of his lemmings had ever visited and had no intention of ever visiting Key West. And I also hazard a wild wager that none of them visited Key West after sending out their electronic paper arrows. But we’d love to have them visit and spend their money here. We’d love that. I wrote several times during the campaign that God had decided Key West should have a clothing optional beach, and it was the Devil who opposed it. I write it again. That’s right, Commissioner Wardlow and your invisible constituents. That’s right, Commissioners Gibson and Rossi and your invisible constituents. That’s right, former Mayor McPherson and your former invisible constituents. That’s right American Decency Society, the religious right, prudes, conservatives in liberal sheep clothing, God wants Key West to have a nude beach.
Commissioner Lopez, on this issue you also might wish to check in with your pastor brother, Sinclaire Forbes, who can tell you whose side God is on in this little nubile war. You do intend to put the will of God first, don’t you, Commissioner Lopez? As in, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth . . . As in, In the beginning, there were no fig leaves in Paradise, and there still aren’t any there . . .
Sloan