by Travis Mateer
Who remembers the legislative controversy about yoga pants? For those who don’t recall how Republicans in Montana made yoga pants a statewide issue in 2015, here’s an article from the Guardian that gave my new favorite NIMBY, Doc Moore, the opportunity to claim it was all a joke.
It was all a joke.
That’s the message from a Montana House representative who said he was making a wisecrack when a reporter asked about his efforts to expand a state decency law.
“Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway,” Republican David Moore told an Associated Press reporter, whose story appeared in the Billings Gazette and was picked up by publications as disparate as Fox News and Jezebel.
The decency law, which was couched in language that was vague and even bizarre when it made its way into the judiciary committee, was unanimously tabled on Wednesday evening, the Gazette reported. But that didn’t save Moore from a media lashing.
Before pivoting to Doc’s problem with urban camping, here’s a little bit more about why yoga pants got lumped into the concern over simulated genitals.
Moore’s bill, HB 365, would have banned people from exposing “genitals, pubic hair, or anus of exposes the areola or nipple of the person’s breast with anything less than a fully opaque covering while in a public place.”
The passage Moore said could have applied to beige yoga pants, according to the Associated Press, would have banned “any device, costume, or covering that gives the appearance of or simulates the genitals, pubic hair, anus region, or pubic hair region or exposes any device worn as a cover over the nipple or areola of the female breast that simulates and gives the realistic appearance of a nipple or areola while in a public place”.
Moore said the legislation was modeled on decency laws in 14 other states. The US supreme court ruled that state laws barring nudity were constitutional in 1991, in Barnes v Glen Theatre, an Indiana case in which the state sought to stop a club from allowing totally nude dancing.
Moving from on from areoles and anuses, here’s the same joke of a man throwing his NIMBY tantrum about Bellevue Park (emphasis mine):
Moore told MTN that with taxpayers spending millions of dollars on parks in Missoula there needs to be a better plan in place for the unhoused.
We talked with Missoula City Council members Amber Sherill and Mike Nugent who represent Ward 4 where Bellevue Park is located.
Nugent explained that the ordinance was passed to give the city tools to address the long-term unhoused problem in Missoula but the rollout is not what the Missoula City Council or city officials had envisioned.
“Council and the public have asked the city and the parks department to kind of reevaluate how this is being rolled out to see how we can see how we can have a better impact in some areas,” Nugent said.
If Doc Moore becomes the voice of opposition to Missoula’s urban camping insanity, our elected leaders should consider that a gift. Here’s some of Doc’s own words about this urban camping threat from an op-ed Doc submitted last week (emphasis mine):
Shockingly for the community, this ordinance failed to look at the Safe Routes for School children safety in this plan. Residents surrounding the parks detailed in the initial map were not notified. Both Law Enforcement and MCPS have voiced their concerns over this ordinance.
Neighborhoods have reported multiple campers violating the overnight shelter regulations and were told by law enforcement that they are unenforceable. There are no consequences for breaking rules. The fear of my neighbors is that something unbelievably bad is going to happen before action is taken.
If Doc actually cared about what was happening in this town then he would have been paying attention to this issue over the years, but it’s only when a park in proximity to his home is under threat that this NIMBY is deciding to freak out, and that makes me incredibly annoyed.
I can already see how this perfect NIMBY Republican is going to turn this debate into a partisan narrative battle, so in anticipation of this unfortunate development I’m going to be mocking Montanan Republicans ALL WEEK.
If you’re a non-partisan citizen of Zoom Town who appreciates my disdain for party politics, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). No one else has done more to expose the actual threat to this community from uncritically supporting the influencers who benefit from our local Homeless Industrial Complex than I have. And I don’t do this to score points for either political party.
Thanks for reading!