BOULDER — A 69-year-old man is caught masturbating behind a Dumpster at the University of Colorado in 2006. He was ticketed for public indecency, a petty offense carrying a punishment slightly harsher than littering.
A 46-year-old man was found shirtless, drunk and urinating on the side of the road in east Boulder County the same year. He was ticketed for indecent exposure, a Class 1 misdemeanor that carries mandatory registration as a sex offender, if convicted.
Public nudity in Boulder isn’t exactly uncommon: Last year, more than 60 cyclists biked bare to protest oil-burning cars; a CU student ran naked across campus while tripping on acid, and another, also tripping, jumped naked out of a car and rolled around in the street; a 55-year-old man took several nude jogs along Folsom Street; and a teenager streaked the Boulder-Fairview football game.
But how the nude offenders are ticketed by police — if they are ticketed at all — can vary widely, resulting in either a relatively minor offense or life-changing registration as a sex offender.
In the wake of last year’s naked pumpkin run, when a dozen “Naked Pumpkin Runners” were ticketed for indecent exposure on Halloween, public frustration with Colorado’s nudity laws came boiling up. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union is lobbying for changes that would keep streakers off sex-offender lists and protect nudity as a constitutionally sheltered freedom of expression.
“We are trying to make changes at the state level,” said Judd Golden, who chairs the Boulder County chapter of the ACLU. “We are very concerned about the way in which the Colorado sex-offender registry is set up, resulting in sex-offender status for these kinds of activities.”
Read the rest of this story and see photos and video of last years Naked Pumpkin Run at .
