Values too central to abandon

Lee Baxandall and LGBTQ naturists

Naturist activist Lee Baxandall, who founded the Naturist Society and whose work led to the formation of the Naturist Action Committee and the Naturist Education Foundation, was an early advocate for a diverse and inclusive naturism. As author Brian Hoffman notes in his book Naked: A Cultural History of American Nudism, “Baxandall welcomed a growing interest in TNS (the Naturist Society) among gay men and lesbians who saw naturism as an alternative to an urban gay identity defined by privilege, whiteness, and a depoliticized commercial culture.”

Baxandall began his work as a free beach activist in 1975. During that period, he observed the critical role lesbians and gays played in securing clothing-optional spaces on the nation's beaches. In an editorial published in the November 1981 issue of Clothed With The Sun, Baxandall writes: “Gays on the nude beach have often led because of more experience at defying intimidation on behalf of values too central to abandon.”

He elaborates:

At the origins of naturism, and free sexual preference as well, lies a rejection of artificial social codes which impose irrational hierarchies and fears on a human potential which is capable of myriad realizations. This energy is always potential, and it brought naturist impulses close to gay and lesbian culture once more in the 1960s and 1970s on the free beaches of California, New England, and Florida, where gays had staked out remote stretches which were then shared by heterosexual couples and singles.

In the Spring-Summer 1984 issue of the Gay & Lesbian Naturists Newsletter, Baxandall expands on his belief that LGBTQ individuals had played an essential role in the birth of the North American free beach movement:

The free beach movement, too, has at most crucial points been pioneered by gay beach going groups. San Gregorio, the first nationally known nude or free beach in the mid-1960s, was primarily gay then and now. At the same time, heterosexual couples and singles always have felt safe and free to visit, and this has also been true around other primarily gay nude beaches of the West and East coasts. The interaction of the gay and the naturist value systems in the development of the body freedom movement is a topic very much worth exploring.

Making the connection

Baxandall was aware that an effective and politically relevant naturist coalition would have to expand beyond the confines of the private, members-only, heterosexual couples-only nudist camps. He appreciated that promoting naturism as a diverse and inclusive movement was both ethical and pragmatic. When he began his naturist activism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Baxandall observed that many camps refused admission to LGBTQ couples and individuals, single men, and people of color. He rejected this insularism and correctly identified it as a fundamental weakness of the movement. He pointed out that the essential values of naturism and social nudity were in practice long before the inception of the North American nudist camp. In his 1981 Clothed With The Sun editorial, Baxandall suggests that homosexuality and naturism share a connection that dates back far earlier than the founding of the American nude beaches:

What do homosexuality and naturism share in common? The family-oriented nudists might pause to reflect on how social nudity and free sexual preference could come to seem antagonistic. For what was the nude classical culture of antiquity that we admire, if not homosexual? And what of the allusions to Greek ideals that inspired the nudist movement from its earliest origin in Germany (see, e.g., Fidus’ art in “Spirituality”), if not suffused with homophilia?

Significantly, Baxandall selected a Fidus image—the 1896 silhouette “Summer”—as an early logo for The Naturists. 

Baxandall and Gay Naturists International 

In 1983, Lee Baxandall approached a naturist organizer named Murray Kaufman and encouraged him to lead the first nationwide lesbian and gay naturist network, initially operating as a special interest group within The Naturist Society. Baxandall supported the formation of a wide array of naturist special interest groups throughout the country in this manner, providing seed money and access to the Naturists mailing list to reach prospective members. Kaufman, Bern Loibl, and Shelley Seidman founded the influential Tri-State Metro Naturists in 1981, organizing naturists in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut with assistance from Baxandall. Kaufman's experience with TSMN and involvement with the LGBTQ communities made him an ideal leader for the new lesbian and gay special interest group. 

It is important to note that the group was not an attempt to create a separate space for LGBTQ naturists but to open an access point to the larger nudist/naturist movement. Like the other special interest groups he encouraged, the lesbian and gay group was meant to operate as a component of a robust national naturist network.

The June 19, 1991 issue of Outweek features an article by Jay Blotcher entitled “Grin and Bare It: The World of Gay Nudists,” which reports that the special interest group conceived by Baxandall and Kaufman had grown to include “375 individual members nationally and 33 clubs, each claiming 60 to 200 members.” The article credits Baxandall for helping to spearhead the national LGBTQ movement: “In 1983, Baxandall asked Kaufman if he was ready to come out of the closet. He had fielded enough requests from gay male nudists to feel that the time had come for the establishment of a special interest group.” The 1991 Outweek article quotes an American Sunbathing Association spokesperson, who acknowledges the Naturists’ greater commitment to diversity: “Our organization is pretty conservative; 64 percent of them are married. The Naturist Society has a much larger gay membership. We're geared more to families and couples.” Further along in the article, California naturist leader and Elysium Institute founder Ed Lange offers a blunt explanation for the problem of homophobia in the nudist movement: “Some nudists are assholes, some are not.”

The first national gay naturist gathering was held at a campground in Ohio in 1985 and relocated to Pennsylvania in 1992. By 1993, the lesbian and gay special interest group had grown so successful that it incorporated as an independent nonprofit organization—Gay Naturists International (GNI).  

A reader letter from a GNI member in the Spring 2009 issue of Nude & Natural credits Baxandall for helping to secure the present location of the GNI annual gathering.

Lee was also instrumental in negotiating with then Camp Akiba in Pennsylvania to have a non-nudist summer camp host a nude event. He felt that having a nudist event at a nudist park was preaching to the choir, and that by having a nude event in an otherwise clothed community, people's negative perceptions of social nudity could be changed. The gatherings that Lee orchestrated there in the '80s laid the groundwork for an August (GNI) gathering there that started in 1992.

Confronting opposition

A December 1985 Los Angeles Times poll found that 75% of respondents denied having any friends, relatives, or coworkers who were gay or lesbian. A Gallup poll conducted in July 1986 found that 57% of Americans believed gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should be illegal. There was very little incentive for any organization to collaborate with members of the LGBTQ communities, and Baxandall's efforts to do so were met with harsh opposition from within the nudist and naturist movements. Particularly controversial was Baxandall’s insistence that Naturist Society affiliates sign a non-discrimination agreement that included a sexual orientation clause. A 1985 reader letter published in Clothed With The Sun questioned this policy. “The admittance of gays can be a problem,” the reader warned. “It may well scare off dues-paying members. I think it would be little problem to fix that one section of the agreement.” Baxandall was outraged:

With the small opportune stroke of the pen that you suggest, TNS would betray its potential, and undermine the naturist civil rights of that large minority of the population which identifies as gay. And for what? Only to encourage the clubs – already in many cases out of touch with the real world – to grow still more smug, cliquish, and unappealing to the general public which appreciates gays for their humanity and knows the time of intolerance is gone. We feel there’s been enough of self-congratulatory heterosexualism, too little of understanding and brotherhood in this movement already. The next time that you feel like putting down someone who is gay, consider how some pretty ignorant people put down those who are nudist. 

Although Baxandall may have been too optimistic in his assertion that “the time of intolerance is gone,” his support of the LGBTQ communities never wavered. In the October 21, 1991 issue of Nude & Natural, Baxandall writes: “We never considered in 1980 founding a TNS which might however subtly or crudely discriminate against, discourage, or humiliate the nudist having a same gender sexual preference... We weren’t building a new naked ghetto against the world. We were out to change ourselves while changing the world.” Baxandall repeatedly confronted anti-gay bigotry within the naturist movement. During the 1990 International Naturist Gathering in Belezy, France, he fiercely rejected a prominent British naturist leader’s baseless suggestion that gay men posed a threat to children. His inclusion of a segment on gay naturism in his 1993 Frontiers of Naturism documentary drew condemnation from American nudist leaders. The old guard felt that opening the movement to LGBTQ individuals would destroy the “family-oriented” nudist culture. Baxandall responded by calling attention to the sexist beauty pageants and the “backlot swingers” of the nudist camps and questioning the “sexless paradise” narrative promoted by those camps.

Baxandall’s support of the LGBTQ communities extended beyond non-discrimination policies and editorials in the pages of his magazines. He went to great lengths to ensure that LGBTQ naturists were active and engaged in his organizations and gatherings. According to an article concerning Baxandall and gay naturism in the April 9, 1984 issue of New York Native, “It has been decided that when Naturist conferences are held in a nudist camp, the nudist camp must accept gay couples, or the conference will not be held there.” At a photography workshop at the 1983 East Coast Naturist Gathering, Baxandall asked male members of the lesbian and gay special interest group to serve as models to facilitate “the end of active-passive, male-female, hegemony of the patriarchy in nude imaging.”

Baxandall’s legacy

Over forty years later, some traditional nudist resorts, campgrounds, and organizations continue to have restrictive admission policies that favor mixed-gender couples. Many deny access to singles. Some refuse to admit any LGBTQ individuals. Much work remains to make naturism a genuinely inclusive movement that reflects the demographics of the larger society. It is not just women who are underrepresented.

Baxandall’s enlightened attitude toward the LGBTQ communities was likely fomented in his earlier career as a writer and playwright and his involvement in progressive political causes that eventually led him to take on the government’s proposed ban on skinny-dipping at Truro Beach, Massachusetts. As his activism began to coalesce around the free beach movement, Baxandall increasingly encountered lesbian and gay activists and recognized the outsized role they played in securing and maintaining these spaces. Furthermore, as his naturist organizations began to take shape, he recognized that the isolationism and insularism of the private, secretive, culturally homogeneous camps would eventually become a liability to the movement. An effective movement would have to expand and become far more inclusive if it were to evolve—or survive.

In this era of disappearing nudist resorts, diminished organizations, and a rise in legislative threats, Lee Baxandall's vision of an inclusive naturist community as an essential foundation for an influential political constituency is more valid—and urgent—than ever before, particularly as bills targeting nude beaches and clothing-optional events and activities increasingly intersect with bills focused on restricting the rights of the LGBTQ communities. 

Baxandall understood that building alliances and broadening the scope of naturist interests creates a stronger naturist movement. North America has lost dozens of nude beaches since the 1980s. Two of those challenged last year—Hanlan’s Point and Denny Blaine Park—were preserved through the rapid response and well-organized efforts of the local LGBTQ communities. It is curious, then, that many in the movement continue to resist efforts to seek alliances and expand the constituency, even as more and more clubs vanish and organization memberships plummet. Choosing to remain exclusionary and refuse a role in any broader civil liberties movement is an existential mistake. Baxandall’s oft-quoted words from his 1981 editorial in Clothed With The Sun are worth consideration: “A naturism which separates from other vital liberation movements in society, and fixes only upon the external forms of its differentness from majoritarian values, is already a sect, a curiosity, and on its way to extinction.”

Perhaps the nudist movement was once able to thrive as a cultish and covert sect that quietly lurked in backwoods communes; its adherents sealed away in their idyllic utopias and set apart from the broader society. There may have been a time when nudists could be indifferent to the struggles of other social movements and subcultures and remain apolitical, disengaged, and focused on nothing more substantive than volleyball tournaments and chili cookoffs. 

That time has passed. 🪐