Topless Tirade Hurts More Serious Issues

Magistrate William C. Hamlett identified the overriding issue last week, after fining two women who went topless in a Moscow, Idaho, bar in December $115 apiece.

“The bottom line,” lectured Hamlett, “is don’t make big things out of little things.”

Indeed, Dieka Gericke, 26, Kristin Gustafson, 25, and the few other women involved in the shirtless-in-Moscow craze are making a mountain out of a molehill. They’re not going to persuade society that a woman’s bare chest is as sexually neutral as a man’s - even in a college town. If they try, they can expect to be fined or jailed.

Meanwhile, their misguided cause distracts from important women’s issues, such as equal pay for equal work, equal opportunity and a harassment-free workplace.

We doubt, however, that the Moscow women will heed Hamlett’s appeal to common sense. In fact, Gericke and Gustafson told the Lewiston Tribune after their hearing that they’d doff their shirts in public again if they get the urge. That defiance toward community standards should prompt the Moscow City Council to close a loophole that permits women to appear topless in public areas.

Significantly, the two Moscow women were arrested for trespassing, not indecent exposure, for refusing to leave John’s Alley after dancing topless. They wouldn’t have invited trouble if they’d have gone topless outside the bar that night, as activist Lori Graves did. In December, Graves and two friends beat an indecent exposure rap, stemming from their arrest last summer for walking topless downtown. In court, they argued successfully that the city ordinance governing indecent exposure was too vague.

Graves, of course, has sought notoriety in the past year by pushing several causes, from environmental activism to her brand of human rights. Currently, she’s suing Coeur d’Alene for allegedly violating her civil rights last July when police arrested her during the Aryan Nations march.

In December, her Moscow home was firebombed.

Graves has made it clear she isn’t dissuaded easily.

She, and the others who insist on foisting their morality on their Moscow neighbors, enjoy pushing the envelope. They relish making big things out of little things. The town should push back with a constitutionally defensible ordinance that requires them to keep their shirts on.