US: A judge in Maryland in the US has ruled that mooning is a cheeky yet constitutionally protected form of communication - one up for Chaucer and Mel Gibson!
What's the message?
"He was showing his disapproval . . . It was intended to offend, in the sense of being critical," says lawyer James Maxwell, speaking of his client, Raymond McNealy (44) of suburban Germantown.
Last June, exasperated by a feud involving a homeowners' association, McNealy felt moved to moon his neighbour, a member of the association's board, who was accompanied by her eight-year-old daughter.
McNealy was put on trial for indecent exposure and found guilty last autumn.
His misbegotten moon could have cost him three years in prison and a $1,000 (€828) fine. After an appeal this week, the verdict was reversed.
Mooning is a blunt instrument to communicate. It is not particularly nice or well- mannered. As circuit court judge John Debelius said in the acquittal, the act is "disgusting" and "demeaning".
McNealy, retired on disability from his family's DIY business, might have experienced a different judicial outcome, the judge added, if he had been on trial for "being a jerk".
At a time when some say civil liberties are being restricted (the Patriot Act is silent on mooning), it may be comforting that the right of Marylanders to moon has been affirmed.
But are citizens free to moon anybody, any time?
Will there be full moons every night there's a basketball game?
On the annual lobby day in state capital Annapolis, when the masses come to petition legislators for their pet projects, will they dispense with the formalities and just drop their trousers? Can citizens moon judges, police officers, the governor?
"I don't think that mooning the governor - I'm not suggesting it's a nice thing to do - would be any worse in terms of violation of criminal law than thumbing your nose," says Maxwell.
Not so fast, says Montgomery County state's attorney Doug Gansler: "This is not a blanket permission slip to moon in Maryland."
While Maxwell says the judge ruled that buttocks are never "private parts" to fit the crime of indecent exposure, Gansler says he would prosecute again if an alleged mooner intended his act as a crime.
But who moons with criminal intent? "If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty," the judge said.
Incidentally, Maxwell says his research suggests mooning also is legal in Washington DC, but not in Virginia.
"If the Georgetown basketball team is travelling out to Virginia and somebody decides to moon somebody on the way," Maxwell says, "they better do it before they cross the river."
But it's hard to imagine that mooning the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue would be tolerated for long. - (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post service)