August 26 sees the celebration of Women’s Equality Day. It marks the 72 anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in nationwide elections.

However, on August 23, an organization known as Gotopless.org claims that women are discriminated against in the U.S. by suffering arrest for baring their bosoms in public. By contrast, dudes such as Matthew McConoughey can go shirtless whenever they desire.

Women who dare to be topless in public in the U.S. are arrested, fined, humiliated , criminalized.

On August 23, women will rally across the USA to protest this gross inequality in the law and will demand for the constitution to be amended to grant them the fundamental right to be topless wherever men are.

Currently the following rallies are slated:

• WASHINGTON, DC: Lafayette Park, across from the White House
• LOS ANGELES: Venice Beach
• NEW YORK CITY: Central Park
• HAWAII: Kona, Big Island
• DENVER: (August 26) at the door steps of the Presidential Democratic Convention.

Actually, several US and Canadian cities allow women to go without a shirt; however, few of them exercise the right. New York has a ruling from its high court that one of the most important purposes to be served by the equal protection clause is to ensure that ‘public sensibilities’ grounded in the prejudice and unexamined stereotypes do not become enshrined as part of a policy of government.

The District of Columbia, as of 1986, has a Court of Appeals ruling in place that the D.C. nudity law does not apply to any body part but genitals.

In Florida, the Fifth District Court of Appeal in 2007 dismissed a woman’s plea to go topless at Daytona Beach. However, the court dismissed the case without an opinion, thus, presenting an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.

Nine foreign women were charged with prostitution after being arrested at the weekend on the Greek holiday island of Zakynthos, police have said.

Police sources in Athens said earlier the women involved were British and had been taking part in an oral sexual competition which was video recorded and was to be posted on the Internet.

However, a local police official on Zakynthos said the women were mostly from eastern Europe and were working in strip clubs at Laganas in the south of the Ionian island.

Six foreign and six Greek men, including two bar owners, were also charged with encouraging obscene behaviour.

Sex seems to be everywhere these days, yet the details of Max Mosley's privacy hearing have helped lift a veil on one type of sexual behaviour still shrouded in secrecy - sadomasochism.

Nobody knows how many people are involved in the "scene": a loose grouping of people across the country who enjoy an unorthodox - and under current laws potentially illegal - sexual lifestyle. However, one US study suggests 11% of women and 14% of men have engaged in BDSM - an abbreviated acronym for bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism and masochism - activities.

If those figures are translated to the UK, it could mean around four million people have tried BDSM. A smaller, but still substantial, number has chosen to make it a "lifestyle choice".

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Fighting Freedom

Thanks to Alan
See full article from the Pandora's Blog

More and more papers are adding their voices to the consensus that spanking play is normal, common, and harmless. More articles on spanking have been posted in the last week than ever before. The Daily Record recently ran an advice column on how to seek out introducing healthy spanking play, and yesterday's Metro ran a story on Peter Jones, author of Confessions of a London Spank Daddy, which surely was only published because of the kink-curious climate provoked by the Mosley case, for all that it studiously avoids mentioning it. Spanking has never been so fascinating to the UK press.

The Mosley case was hugely depressing to me at the time, not least because I was busy stressing about the new violent porn legislation which was passed a few weeks ago, and which groups all over the UK fought for years to prevent, criminalising possession of images which appear to depict serious injury to the anus, breasts or genitals. I didn't write about this legislation, either, because when it was passed I felt so disaffected, so disenfranchised, that I just didn't know what to say. We'd campaigned and protested for months, and they'd passed it anyway.

The actual wording of the legislation is dangerously vague. Spanking and CP material isn't necessarily illegal, but given an unsympathetic judge armed with waffly, imprecise language, it could be. As a result, most of the individuals I know who own spanking porn haven't changed their habits since the law was passed; but the film producers are getting increasingly antsy. Several times this year, ideas I've had for shoots which would have been perfectly fine a few months previously were vetoed by nervous site owners who didn't want to risk it. Any caning on the breasts, for example, was deemed off-limits by one site owner unless it was so light as to be laughable. Face slapping was another no-no, although quite why when faces aren't a part of the body listed in the new legislation, I have no idea.

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Nutter protest is growing over a swingers club in a quiet village, ahead of a licensing hearing which could secure the venue's future.

Villagers in Over, furious at the opening of Xscape Cambridge, claim the club:

• Has brought "kerb crawlers" onto village streets
• Attracts people whose sexual behaviour is outside society's normally accepted boundaries
• Leaves villagers at risk of overhearing "undesirable" conversations among clients
• Could put our children at risk

Co-owner Stewart Hobbs insists clients at the adults-only venue, which opened on the Norman Way Industrial Estate last month, have not caused problems in the village.

A retrospective planning application for a change of use to a private members club - including bar, dance floor and rooms for sexual activities - has been made. The application is expected to be decided next month after a South Cambridgeshire District Council licensing meeting on Friday, July 18. Xscape Cambridge has so far held a temporary event notice.

Nutters claim that strangers have been seen "lurking" near their homes and have raised the prospect of paedophiles frequenting the premises.

Over Parish Council has also objected, citing the presence of undesirable persons loitering outside unit 16A and the increase in kerb-crawling.

A fierce battle is brewing over plans to ban nudity at the picturesque San Onofre State Beach, which has been one of America's most famous naturist destinations for more than 40 years.

Ever since the Summer of Love in 1967, free-spirited visitors have let it all hang out at the secluded beauty spot, which stretches along several miles of Pacific coastline roughly half-way between Los Angeles and San Diego.

However, the arrival of a prudish new parks chief means the era of tolerance that has allowed them to sunbathe and surf without getting any nasty tan-lines is about to end. The acting park superintendent Rich Haydon, who arrived in the job this year, has announced that nudity at San Onofre is to be banned from Labour Day, which falls on the first weekend in September. His officers, who have been upset by reports of lewd behaviour on the beach, will arrest any revellers who refuse to cover up.

Signs explaining the change in policy have already been installed around the car park, and patrons are being verbally warned that their endless summer is to be rudely interrupted.

To the local naturist community, this represents an affront to civil liberties. A wide-ranging campaign of disobedience is being planned, and like most good American controversies, the affair is likely to end up in court.

On Thursday, we filed a lawsuit at Orange County Superior Court, and if necessary, we will fight this all the way up to Federal level, said R Allen Baylis of Friends of San Onofre Beach, a naturist action group. The law says that if you want to make a radical change to public policy, you have to seek input from the public. And they have totally failed to do that.

The case is throwing light on California's opaque laws regarding public nudity. State law prohibits nudity in all parks, except in authorised areas set aside for the purpose. But there are no such areas. Instead, San Onofre and a couple of other reserves are currently governed by the so-called Cahill policy, under which nudity is tolerated unless it elicits a complaint from the public.

Dogging - where couples 'get it on' in public while others watch - has, according to Journal sources, hit the streets of Buncrana.

Dogging comes from the expression 'walking the dog'. It is a term that covers outdoor exhibitionism and what's described as 'car fun'.

Hotspots are already noted on the popular site as being Lisfannon beach and public toilets on the sea-front in Buncrana amongst a host of other locations across the county.

But Buncrana Sergeant John O'Keefe doesn't believe explicit public sex acts are going on. He said: We have had no reports of it here.

A man who ran a swingers club has admitted managing a brothel.

Brian Sheridan ran Hamshaws in Scaynes Hill, near Haywards Heath, with his wife Caroline.

Plans for a three day fetish festival on the ten-acre site were halted when police stopped it going ahead in 2006.

Sheridan and his wife ran the club where swingers met to have sex with each other, often as others watched. But residents complained about activities there and brought in their own private investigator to infiltrate the club.

Karen Holt, persecuting, said up to 60 men attended Pandora's Party nights held there every Wednesday night. The event was run by a prostitute who called herself Pandora, Hove Crown Court heard. She paid rent for the use of the club to Brian Sheridan and had two other prostitutes working with her.

The privte investigator said Pandora and her girls had group and individual sex with clients in the club's games room while other men watched. On a second visit a month later he saw a leather-clad man and woman build a torture rack in the club's main play area. The man was put face up on the rack and blindfolded before being whipped and given electric shocks as hot wax was poured on his chest. Other guests used rooms in the club's 'Wicked Chalet' for sex while being watched by male customers.

Sheridan and his wife, from Cobham, Surrey, were arrested and denied managing a brothel between November 2005 and June 2006. Sheridan changed his plea to guilty before his trial was due to start. The prosecution offered no evidence against Mrs Sheridan who was found not guilty on the direction of the judge.

Judge Cedric Joseph said he will almost certainly give Sheridan a ten-month prison sentence suspended for two years. However, he adjourned sentence until August 11 so that a decision can be taken on how much unpaid community work Sheridan must do.

CBS As we watched the premier I was surprised, relieved and even a little shocked to find that Swingtown was very well done.

I was intrigued that the show seemed to have gotten so many things right, from the clothing and the music of the 1970s, to the attitudes and motivations of newbies, vanillas and seasoned swingers.

The show, which throws an unsuspecting married couple into the burgeoning 1976 swinging scene of suburban Chicago seems to be written by people who definitely have some understanding of the lifestyle, because... I want to live next door to the Deckers.

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