Last weekend, nude sunbathers in Seattle — where public nudity has been officially legal since 1990 — looked up from the lawn at Denny Blaine (a queer beach on the shore of Lake Washington) to find cops staring them down.
The cops ordered them to put their clothes on.
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One Seattle sunbather, a trans woman, didn’t let the order go unchallenged, according to The Stranger.
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John, a witness who sat on a park wall at with his bike, says the woman shouted that people “did not have to comply”; several other beachgoers said she was threatened with arrest.
Police told the woman not to come back to the park for a week, witnesses say.
The queer lakeside hangout in the Denny Blaine neighborhood, a sought-after location in east central Seattle, has a complicated history with neighbors and the police. Last Sunday’s events are the most recent in a wave of actions against the beach.
In late 2023, beachgoers learned of a plan to construct a playground at Denny Blaine, after millionaire homeowner Stuart Sloan (who lives directly across the street from the park) anonymously donated $1 million for construction. That plan failed after public uproar.
Last month, Denny Blaine Park for All, a group of neighbors that includes Sloan, sued Seattle for allegedly allowing the beach to become a “regional venue” for public masturbation and public sex. Regular beachgoers have denied the characterization.
While masturbation does happen at the park, it’s rare, beach advocates say, and the consensus is that the community knows how to deal with it without intercession by the police.
The neighborhood group’s lawsuit also goes after legal nudity, making an argument that Seattle’s Parks Department is violating its Code of Conduct by depriving neighbors of enjoyment of the park.
Beachgoers say police arrived at Denny Blaine around 2:40 p.m. on Sunday. About 20 sunbathers on the beach were asked to cover up.
Carlos, who asked to use only his first name to protect his privacy, said he was lying naked on the grassy upper level of the park when an SPD officer approached him and said he couldn’t go nude.
He’s been coming to the beach for seven years and told the officer that wasn’t true.
Nudity has been legal in Seattle since the 1990 case, Seattle v. Johnson, found a local law against “lewd conduct” violated the right to free expression.
While Washington State has a law against indecent exposure, SPD guidance from 2008 says that officers shouldn’t take action unless there’s “lewd or offensive behavior.”
Carlos said he was only sunbathing, as was the transgender woman who was harassed.
Officers told one regular beachgoer that the anti-nude crackdown was ordered by “higher-ups.”
Several beachgoers said a blonde man parked in a grey Chevy Tahoe spoke to one of the officers when she arrived — they suspect he made the call.
He told one longtime beachgoer he was hired as private security by “interests in the neighborhood.”
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