Backyard Nudist Arrested
Enjoying Your Property While Naked
By Daniel Muniz

In my hometown of San Antonio Texas, Alex Garcia, age 40, was arrested by police for enjoying his backyard in the nude. Neighbors have often seen Garcia in his backyard without any clothes on. According to a local news broadcast, neighbor Mary Lou Hernandez said:

As a result of Garcia’s actions, many neighborhood residents were about to file a petition when the arrest happened.

The question is does a homeowner have a right to enjoy his own backyard in the buff?

Before going into any kind of pro or con about this incident, I have to tip my hat about my own personal beliefs.

As a conservative, I respect and cherish the value of privacy and personal freedom. Unless there is some detriment to society as a whole, then people ought to do what they want to do. And I am not a puritanical conservative either. I do not have a problem with nudity in art or as recreation.

The problem I have with it is when someone starts infringing on other people’s sensibilities and personal security.

In a residential neighborhood, homeowners share their viewing space with everybody else unless it can be enclosed. In essence, nobody would even care if Garcia were to walk around in his birthday suit inside his own house because no one would even know. That is not the same with a yard.

However, unlike a front yard, a backyard is a more reserved piece of property especially when there is a fence around it. Even so, it is apparent that the back half of Garcia’s property still occupies the viewing space of his neighbors because it is not shielded from their view and that is what created the problem.

I am not opposed to people who want to use nudism as a form of recreation. In fact, responsible nudists go out of their way to enclose and separate their leisure activity from everybody else. And most importantly, the responsible ones abhor lewd behavior and anything else that offends people who do not share in that lifestyle. In other words, they highly value privacy and seclusion.

Alex Garcia does not fall into that category.

In fact, his actions are the very same ones that responsible nudists loathe.

Instead of enjoying his leisure activity in seclusion, Garcia is making a spectacle of himself and drawing unnecessary attention. He is no longer exercising personal freedom but exhibiting the actions of a pervert. And that is the behavior that is alarming and disturbing. Certain sexual predators get their kicks off of escalating people’s fears. As a result, Garcia is not enjoying nudism as recreation but using it as a tool to illicit uneasiness and apprehension.

Below is a comment from someone who read this news story:

The first assertion is blatantly wrong. Even though a person may own a house, a residential property is still part of a community and that homeowner still has to adhere to community standards. That is why responsible nudists find secluded places to recreate in.

An eight foot privacy fence is a sensible and reasonable option but only if it can work. In the previous house I lived in, the neighborhood was a matchbox set of houses that looked alike. Almost all of them were close together and two stories high thus such a tall fence would be useless because of the views from the second story windows. My current house is in a hilly neighborhood in which you have a full view of about everybody else’s backyard.

A privacy fence or landscaping would work fairly well in a neighborhood on flat land of single story houses.

Below is another comment along the lines of what I probably agree with:

The most immediate concern for surrounding neighbors is whether or not Garcia is doing this for his own sexual gratification. If that is the case, then he is a dangerous person to have around especially if he is getting his kicks out of intimidating his neighbors. The concern now is whether or not he will escalate his actions to become a flasher outside of his property or become a predator.

Overall, I am glad that Alex Garcia was arrested and perhaps the local community will continue to apply pressure on him to change his behavior or at least encourage him to practice it somewhere out of their view. And somehow I also suspect that he is the type of nudist that his neighbors do not want to see naked.

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