Letters for June 19, 2014

• Tropic Care deserves our thanks • Be brave, protect our children • Rules should be the same for all • It’s OK to be topless in Hawaii

Tropic Care deserves our thanks

I have just returned home from my Tropic Care experience. It was wonderful. We all had fun sitting and chatting, laughing, joking in the lines, getting to know each other and even making some new friends. Aunty Rose and Mr. Baretto stand out the most to me.

The men and women of this arm of the military were above and beyond exemplary. I had four teeth extracted, and seven fillings done, in a wonderful, congenial atmosphere. It was fun to see all of the high tech stuff, and how well run and organized everyone was.

I would like to particularly thank LCDR Minh Phan, the doctor who performed my procedure, and TSGT Julie Goist, who was his assistant. We had great fun, they took excellent care of me, as I was kind of terrified, but the entire procedure was completely painless and they sent me home with pain meds and antibiotics, too!

I am so grateful for their help. I didn’t get the names of the man and woman who were doing the teeth X-rays, but I had so much fun with them! So I want to send out a mahalo to them, too!

Mahalo Tropic Care!

Let’s feed these guys good while they are here! It would be great to stop by with some goodies and some poi to fill their bellies while they work tirelessly to help our people!

Anne Punohu

Kapaa

Be brave, protect our children

I just saw a little girl on TV missing an eye and parts of her face from a dog attack. A while ago, we had a boy here on Kauai seriously injured by a dog and a girl who just escaped serious damage by sacrificing her pet to attacking dogs. 

All evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

Now, I’m not calling dog owners, or even the dogs, evil. But if we cannot gather the courage now to make our children safer than they are, the destruction of one of them as a result of our inaction will be as clear an expression of evil as I can imagine.

Martin Mills

Kapaa

Rules should be the same for all

Speaking of a “a question of legality,” is it legal to run for County Council after you’ve sued the county for disobeying the law? 

Pray tell, do councilmen live by another set of rules than the rest of us?

Pam Dohrman

Hanalei

It’s OK to be topless in Hawaii

This letter is in response to Berna McRoberts’ TGI, June 18 letter complaining about two women sunbathing topless at Poipu Beach. In her letter, Mrs. Roberts expresses her disappointment that the lifeguards would not “reinforce the issue of sunbathing in the nude,” presumably by ordering the two women to put their tops on. Mrs. McRoberts apparently then took it upon herself to tell the women to put their tops on.

There are two Hawaii laws that address various aspects of public nudity. Hawaii Revised Statutes 707-734 prohibits “indecent exposure,” which is defined as intentionally exposing one’s genitals in a manner likely to cause affront. HRS 712-1217 prohibits “open lewdness,” which, in State v. Bull, the Hawaii Supreme Court defined as the “intentional exposure of one’s private parts, where they are likely to be observed by others.”

In State v. Crenshaw, the Hawaii Supreme Court held that female breasts are not genitalia or “private parts” and therefore topless sunbathing does not constitute a prohibited lewd act under HRS 12-1217. By extension, since the indecent exposure law also applies only to the exposure of genitalia, it would follow that topless sunbathing does not violate the indecent exposure statute either.

In sum, unless there is some other rule or regulation I am not aware of, it appears there is no law in Hawaii that prohibits topless sunbathing. While the sunbathing women may have violated some folks’ sense of propriety, they were not breaking any laws and neither the lifeguards nor Mrs. McRoberts had any legal basis to tell them to cover themselves.

Adam Roversi

Kilauea