Slashdot Mirror
Man Who Protested TSA By Stripping Is Acquitted By Judge
AbrasiveCat writes "In an update to an earlier Slashdot story, the Portland Oregon man who was arrested after stripping naked at a TSA checkpoint at Portland Airport was acquitted of indecent exposure charges. He successfully argued that he was protesting TSA actions, and his actions were protected speech under the Oregon Constitution."
What bothers me isn't that he was acquitted, but that he asked for a jury trial, a trial by his peers, and was denied. Generally a judge rules when there's a matter of law rather than a matter of fact that has to be determined. In this case he charged with a criminal offense and he therefore required a jury trial.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Why do people keep saying that? The court in Oregon where he did it ruled that it was protected speech. That doesn't mean it can only be protected speech in Oregon. Do it in other states, and other states' courts will rule on it too.
Oregon is a bit, er, different. The Supreme Court of Oregon has explicitly ruled that erotic/sexual displays are a form of protected speech. That ruling has led to Oregon's status as the strip club capital of the USA, with more strip clubs per capita than anywhere else, including Las Vegas (though most of them are in the Portland area). Portland has an annual Naked Bike Ride event. The police who follow the riders are there to protect them, not arrest them.
That's not to say some other state couldn't take the same view of things, but this decision is very typically an Oregonian decision. There is a clear distinction between lewdness and nudity, and Oregonians for the most part know how to make this distinction.