Valentine’s Day Brings Naked Parade
Valentine’s Day is a day for lovers, and if you’re still looking for the perfect date idea, then bring your sweetheart down to the Nude Love Parade and celebrate the joy of being naked.
Nudists in San Francisco will gather in Jane Warner Plaza at noon on Saturday, February 13 and walk along a parade route to City Hall to celebrate being naked and in love.
“Drop the pretense! Drop your pants (or skirts)! Take it off and join our parade! Get fully naked or as bare as you dare!”
The parade is being hosted by Gypsy Taub and the Body Freedom Network, notorious nude activists who have long fought San Francisco’s nudity ban, insisting it’s their civil right to go naked.
Calling themselves body freedom activists, the group has worn handcuffs as often as clothes and is currently engaged in a civil rights lawsuit against the city of San Francisco.
However, Saturday’s nude parade won’t face the same type of police scrutiny. A federal judge ordered the city to grant the nudist’s permit allowing them a police escort from San Francisco’s Castro District to City Hall.
Taub and her nudist group, the Body Freedom Network, argues that true liberty means the right to do with your body as you please, which includes being naked, selling it for sex, or having an abortion, according to their website.
“True love knows no judgment, no hate, no separation! True self love means accepting yourself fully just the way you are, true self love means being completely free from shame in all its forms including body shame.”
SF nudist seeking naked justice in nation's capital – SFGate: SFGate SF nudist seeking naked justice in nation's… http://t.co/shZ8UG8bh2
— San Francisco Bay (@sfbaycalifornia) August 5, 2015
A former sex worker, Taub has fought San Francisco’s nudity ban since it was first conceived in 2012. She and her husband were among the first nudists to be arrested on the city hall steps during their nude wedding in 2013.
Taub, originally from Moscow, Russia, says she came to America because of the freedom it offered and was surprised when the law limited her personal activity. Calling herself a body freedom activist, she began fighting for the right to be naked almost as soon as the nudity ban was conceived and hasn’t stopped since.
San Francisco has steadily refused to grant the nudist group the permits it needs to parade naked through the city despite earlier promises. After the nudists were arrested several times for parading naked through the city to protest the denial of their civil liberties, the group sued the city in federal court, claiming their rights had been violated. The case still continues, but a federal judge ordered they be allowed to gather naked for Saturday’s parade.
The Valentine’s Nude Love Parade won’t be weighed down by all those political considerations, however, and nudists from around the state have been invited to bare it all in a celebration of love, according to the group’s website.
“Let’s remind everyone that we are only here today because our parents got naked and made love, that we were all born naked and that we are always naked underneath our clothes. The more we hide from our true selves the more separated we become from ourselves and from each other.”
If you’re still looking for an original Valentine’s Day date idea, why not try getting get naked with your sweetheart and proclaim your love for all the world to see.
“Please join us the day before Valentine’s to celebrate love in its purest, most natural form!”
[Photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP]
