Hippie Hollow

Just two days before a meeting we'd requested with County Attorney Oden to discuss a possible settlement, the county actually sent a S.W.A.T. team to Hippie Hollow in a display of force. An estimated seventy law enforcement officers, including members of the Austin police force, descended on the park. The show included police dogs, a helicopter and black-clad officers with automatic weapons.

When we refused to blink, Oden said he was going to have to ask for a "little investigation" of my wife and me. He did, and found nothing.

A sheriff's department undercover sting operation at the park netted thirteen arrests for illicit behavior. Most of those were later determined to have been the result of entrapment. The sheriff went on television and reported the number arrested as forty-two.

On the day we submitted a motion for summary judgment in the case, a county lawyer called our attorney at home at 10:30 p.m. that same day, asking if that's what we really wanted to do and warning that "we can make it tough on your clients." The following day, a county sheriff's deputy's car was parked in front of our house. For two weeks, deputies parked there in shifts and followed our children through the neighborhood.

In an early court appearance, my younger son Charles, who was then eight years old, noticed the frieze of nude figures that ringed the upper walls of the courtroom in which we sat, waiting for justice. In a whisper, he turned and asked me earnestly if he was going to have to leave the room.

At one point, County Attorney Oden sent a message to my wife Christine and me, saying it was "nothing personal." Damn right it was personal! How much more personal can you get than taking away a parent's right to raise a child with values of the parent's choosing!

The case dragged on for so long that my elder son reached legal age before the case was heard. Robert, who was 14 at the time he was banned from Hippie Hollow, insisted on submitting an affidavit of his own in support of the challenge to the county's action that robbed him of four years at a place that was important to him.

I'm a little league baseball coach. I've been open with the members of the team and their parents about the naturist choices our family has made. Occasionally, when we've been in the newspaper or on television, I've been curious about what the reactions of the baseball parents would be. Not a one was anything but supportive.

Bob Cole, one of the radio deejays who urged his listeners to "call the sheriff," is coach of an opposing little league team. Each time my team would play his, I'd schedule my son to pitch. I admit that seeing Charles strike out Cole's kid, Jason, was a small consolation, but it was one that Charles and I enjoyed. Every single time he faced him.



	U.S Supreme Court Opts Not to Hear Naturists' Appeal in Hippie Hollow Case

	by Bob Morton, NAC Chairman I had allowed myself, quite frankly, to become encouraged by all the official talk of the necessity for tolerance and the respect for diversity that came in the wake of the horrible terrorist attacks in September. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, determined that such sentiments need not be applied to naturists. On October 9, 2001, the Supreme Court let it be known, without further comment, that it was not interested in hearing the appeal of a 1995 rule at Hippie Hollow Park in Texas that suddenly prevented naturist parents from being accompanied by their own children at the popular clothing-optional public park. The High Court's refusal to hear the case wrote the final verse to a cause that had been in the judicial system for more than six years. The intentional inaction of the Court does not have the same legal effect as an adverse ruling, but it will undoubtedly have an impact on family-oriented naturism for years to come. Seen narrowly, a governmental unit imposed a local rule that prohibited parents from involving their children in naturist activities on a specific unit of public land, and that action was allowed to stand. Viewed more broadly, naturism on public land has been successfully characterized as an adults-only enterprise, unsuitable for children. Hippie Hollow is a county-operated public park on Lake Travis, near the city of Austin, Texas. The site has a long tradition of use by skinny-dippers and nude sunbathers. The park is officially clothing-optional and includes signs placed by the county in the mid-1980s that are a variation of the standard "Beyond This Point You May Encounter Nude Sunbathers" wording. The history of events leading to this culmination have been well chronicled in N magazine and elsewhere. The short synopsis is that during Nude Recreation Week in 1995, a tiny local civil liberties group sponsored a poster-making contest for kids with a theme of "body acceptance." The idea was for kids to use poster board and colored markers and crayons supplied by the sponsors. But the press release arrived at local radio stations on a slow news day, and a couple of the more outrageous deejays on a local country music station began portraying the event as it never was intended. They claimed children would be forced to pose nude for lecherous photographers who would enlarge the images to poster size. That was a fabricated provocation intended to inflame the listening audience, and it worked. The deejays told their listeners to call the sheriff and the local prosecutor, and that's what they did. The county attorney, eager to deflect attention from a seamy saga in his personal life that was beginning to receive far too much press, picked up the situation and ran with it. It was the "family values" issue he needed badly. County Attorney Ken Oden initially contended that a nude adult in the presence of a child or a nude child in the presence of an adult constituted the "sexual performance" of that child. That view has never been endorsed by any other attorney to whom I've spoken, but Oden found a clever way to keep it from being tested. He pressured the county commissioners into adopting a park rule that prevented children from being brought into Hippie Hollow. It was the park rule that was challenged in court. Central Texas Nudists, a small organization based in Austin, sued Travis County. My wife and children and I were also plaintiffs. After years of foot dragging, the county was finally forced into court in November, 1999, but a local judge refused to grant a request for summary judgment against the park rule. The following year, a state district court of appeals declined to overturn the ruling. The Texas Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, and eventually, so did the U.S. Supreme Court. The cost of the litigation was not trivial. The Naturist Action Committee and the Naturist Education Foundation helped significantly, as did the American Association for Nude Recreation, the Southwestern Sunbathing Association, the Eastern Sunbathing Association, the Western Sunbathing Association, the Florida Association for Nude Recreation and hundreds of individual naturists and nudists from across North America. To these organizations and individuals, I express my sincere gratitude. Every penny that was donated went to legal expenses; no overhead expenses of any sort were ever taken from the contributed funds. Meanwhile, the county seemed intent on showing that it could play hardball. First came the ploy of assigning a different litigator to the case each time it came due, so that the newly designated county lawyer could claim unfamiliarity and ask for a continuance. But beyond that were what could only be characterized as county-sponsored "dirty tricks." Just two days before a meeting we'd requested with County Attorney Oden to discuss a possible settlement, the county actually sent a S.W.A.T. team to Hippie Hollow in a display of force. An estimated seventy law enforcement officers, including members of the Austin police force, descended on the park. The show included police dogs, a helicopter and black-clad officers with automatic weapons. When we refused to blink, Oden said he was going to have to ask for a "little investigation" of my wife and me. He did, and found nothing. A sheriff's department undercover sting operation at the park netted thirteen arrests for illicit behavior. Most of those were later determined to have been the result of entrapment. The sheriff went on television and reported the number arrested as forty-two. On the day we submitted a motion for summary judgment in the case, a county lawyer called our attorney at home at 10:30 p.m. that same day, asking if that's what we really wanted to do and warning that "we can make it tough on your clients." The following day, a county sheriff's deputy's car was parked in front of our house. For two weeks, deputies parked there in shifts and followed our children through the neighborhood. I don't mention these things as a way of polarizing naturists from law enforcement or the legal system. Nor do I bring them up in an attempt to gain sympathy or to mitigate our losses in the judicial system. Rather, I hope these facts will bring home to naturists the point that we are truly in a battle for our rights! In the face of such opposition, we allocate relatively tiny amounts of money to the defense of naturism. In the course of the six years this case was in the courts, there have been notable small moments that never made it into any of the hundreds of interviews in various newspapers and on radio and television. In an early court appearance, my younger son Charles, who was then eight years old, noticed the frieze of nude figures that ringed the upper walls of the courtroom in which we sat, waiting for justice. In a whisper, he turned and asked me earnestly if he was going to have to leave the room. At one point, County Attorney Oden sent a message to my wife Christine and me, saying it was "nothing personal." Damn right it was personal! How much more personal can you get than taking away a parent's right to raise a child with values of the parent's choosing! The case dragged on for so long that my elder son reached legal age before the case was heard. Robert, who was 14 at the time he was banned from Hippie Hollow, insisted on submitting an affidavit of his own in support of the challenge to the county's action that robbed him of four years at a place that was important to him. I'm a little league baseball coach. I've been open with the members of the team and their parents about the naturist choices our family has made. Occasionally, when we've been in the newspaper or on television, I've been curious about what the reactions of the baseball parents would be. Not a one was anything but supportive. Bob Cole, one of the radio deejays who urged his listeners to "call the sheriff," is coach of an opposing little league team. Each time my team would play his, I'd schedule my son to pitch. I admit that seeing Charles strike out Cole's kid, Jason, was a small consolation, but it was one that Charles and I enjoyed. Every single time he faced him. But what happens now? Well, the Supreme Court let the county's rule stand, so the ban on families with children at Hippie Hollow persists. Ken Oden himself once shared with me his further plan. Oden told me: (1) He intended to characterize the clothing-optional park as an adults-only enterprise by eliminating children. (2) Then he would show, by making arrests there, that it's a den of iniquity. (3) Using existing laws applying to adult business, he would see Hippie Hollow regulated out of existence as a clothing-optional venue. (4) He would expect to see his scheme applied to private nudist parks and resorts. Oden was not kidding. The county attorney, who still has aspirations of one day being appointed a federal judge, has apparently achieved the first of his goals. "Aggressive" law enforcement and deceptive official reporting of the results will go a long way toward meeting Oden's second goal. By eliminating families with children, he has removed one of greatest natural mitigators to openly lewd behavior and has attempted to create a self-fulfilling prophecy at Hippie Hollow. Naturists who fail to speak up for important matters of beach etiquette will accelerate the process. So, do naturists give up? We do not! Although this is admittedly a devastating setback, we continue to achieve significant victories. For our own part, Christine and I will continue to imbue our children with naturist values and educate them to have respect for the judicial system. I admit that the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have made that latter task far more difficult by turning on their collective heels and ignoring us in the Hippie Hollow case. Official pronouncements urging tolerance and diversity have developed a decidedly hollow sound. It's hard for me to respect someone who has chosen not to respect me. \| Return to top \| Return to NAC White Papers \| Return to NAC Welcome page \|