IT SEEMS people once believed that drunk girls in thong bikinis woulddraw tourists to beaches, but these days beach regulators are finding the opposite to be true. The Washington Post reported that Virginia Beach is gung ho about their recently developed campaign to clean up their beaches--and they're not talking about soda cans and cigarette butts ("Good Clean Fun in VA Beach," May 24). Moreso this summer than ever before, the city officials in Virginia Beach have implemented a campaign for public decency in an attempt to make their beach a more family friendly place. However, their plan basically amounts to discrimination against certain types of beachgoers and is a dangerous gateway to serious infringement on civil liberties.
The goal of the effort is to make the beach a more wholesome and safe environment. Basically, the city would like to eradicate the sort of alcohol-soaked "Girls Gone Wild" activity for which locales like Virginia Beach are notorious. Their motivation isn't exactly a personal desire for moral purity -- they want to get the most out if the family consumer base. Many beachgoers reported discomfort with the activities of the rowdier set and the city hopes to draw people with a cleaner image. The problems the campaign is attempting to address are swearing, sexually explicit behaviour, public drunkenness, and other disruptive or intimidating activities.
The icon of the city's reformation of manners is the ubiquitous "No Bad Behavior" sign, which features a red circle and a slash the symbols for expletives. And to enforce this motto, they employ to squads. The Youth Intervention Team try control partiers and the aptly named Friendship Patrol that helps the local police patrol for violators. The reviews are mixed as to public reception to these teams. The city claims that beachgoers are friendly toward the effort but the Post reports that there are plenty of dissenters as well. A planned Sexology Expo, which would have included appearances by adult film stars, was cancelled after Mayor Meyera Oberndorf took a public stand against it. Planners were furious and suspected that participating hotels were pressured by the city into cancelling their reservations. Other visitors complain that the police are too quick to arrest partygoers. One woman griped that they stand outside of the bars and entrap patrons for drunkenness the second they step outside.
Improving what amounts to common courtesy isn't a bad goal at all. In general, it would be lovely if every individual made a personal effort to be simply a little more considerate. However, Virginia Beach's approach goes beyond a friendly reminder to a heavy-handed intervention into people's lives. The city officials have, in effect, determined what the "right" kind of fun is and are trying to hold all beachgoers to that standard. The implication lingers that partiers cannot coexist with family-oriented visitors and the city thus chooses the latter to prevail because they are more economically powerful. The city's favoring of one group over the other amounts to a type of discrimination. This is not a private establishment attempting to choose a client base but a local government who has an obligation to maintain some sort of equality.
A city has the right, even the duty, to maintain order and protect its citizens' safety. But when it comes to setting moral codes or even more superficial standards of an ideal community stretches too far the authority of a city council. Virginia Beach is dangerously close to infringing on the civil liberties of its visitors, as well. The laws against profanity, loud music, thong bikinis and public displays of affection exist to some degree in most American locales, but at a certain level can be questionably constitutional.
The city's mayor justifies the actions by saying that beachgoers unhappy with the city's idealized community are free to go to another beach. And while this justification would have been valid for a private resort, for example, to mandate homogeneity for an entire city is ridiculous. Not only is it unfair on the grounds of equality of opportunity, but the solution of simply removing those who with a different attitude seems lazy and eventually problematic. No on would stand for the national government pursuing a similar plan of action that so severely dictated a standard of living for every resident. Virginia Beach is forgetting that they are a similar public entity that cannot simply pick and choose its residents and visitors.
Virginia Beach seems to have taken a page from history -- in 19th century Britain an Interventionist Society for the Reformation of Manner tried to crack down on public immorality in a similar fashion. The "make the world a better place" ethos of both programs didn't cut it then, and it won't now. The city government's assumption of the dual roles of morality interpreter and social director go beyond the call of duty. Laws exist for safety reasons, not to promote an arbitrary ideal of community. They need to relax on the regulation and assume a more accepting role.
(Kimberly Liu is a Cavalier Daily columnist. She can be reached at kliu@cavalierdaily.com.)
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