Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) officials Superintendent Christopher (Chris) Soller, new Acting Chief Ranger Duane Michael from South Carolina, Deputy Chief Ranger and Chief of Operations on the Beach John Stewart, and Ranger Claire Furmanski attended the Cherry Grove Community Association, Inc. (CGCAI) membership meeting at the Community House on the morning of July 20 Superintendent Soller, who lives in Fire Island Pines, addressed a number of issues—including Cherry Grove’s success in dune cultivation and preservation to prevent flooding by the ocean during a storm such as Sandy; deer and mosquito control efforts; erosion of the bay beach; and people crossing the dunes between the ocean beach and the woods on paths other than the wooden walkway—but of chief interest to a number of us in attendance was that of the FINS Rangers’ relentless issuing of citations for public sex and nudity—legally “public lewdness”—in the Meat Rack this season.
As expected, Soller hewed firmly to FINS ‘party line’ in defending the patrolling Rangers’ actions. “Protection of parks resources,” including the historic Carrington Houses, is FINS Rangers’ major mission, he said. “The Meat Rack is the same as any other tract,” being patrolled with intent to prevent littering, destruction of public resources, nudity, and public sex, and “high access areas are where we’re concentrating our enforcement efforts,” Soller explained. “We’ve done this for years and we should be” able to do so still, in reference to people defending nudity and sex in the woods, is reasoning that will no longer wash, according to Soller, who declared, “I have taken a pledge, an oath that I will respect the laws,” including New York State’s public nudity statute. “We’re not here to discriminate against anyone,” he insisted, saying that as many citations for public sex have been given to heterosexual couples as have been issued to gay ones. But he did point out that solving the problem of heterosexual public nudity and sex at the beach at the western end of Fire Island, adjacent to the lighthouse, is a reason for the focus of the enforcement effort shifting to our communities.
After the meeting, when there was an opportunity to speak to Soller and Michael and the others directly, differences in the definition of public and disagreements about litter management were aired. During the meeting, Soller had cited an individual on the beach, on his cell phone, with a “hula hoop and a hard-on,” near the westernmost walkway into the Pines, and after the meeting, Michael mentioned a man sitting on the concrete, off the sand path, displaying an erection, as the sort of public ‘lewdness’ that would merit citations. He said he would not take his young daughter through the woods for fear of what she would see, in response to this writer’s maintaining that most sexual activity takes place on remote paths, difficult to think of as public, and insisted that patrolling Rangers were justified in probing all paths, no matter how concealed and out of the way we may consider them. Michael and I sparred over the term “victimless crimes,” which I used and which he said was not a legal term. He also applauded the intent of hanging plastic garbage bags in the Meat Rack to control littering, but in effect agreed with his predecessor Lena Koschmann, since transferred to Denver, that the garbage bags were litter in and of themselves.
Although I maintained that issuing the citations was not best use of either the Rangers’ resources or the public’s tax money, Michael did not agree. Although I said that I had been told about numerous citations given since early June, Stewart said that there were no more than 18 given for public nudity and sex, a figure that sounds like a low estimate. I pointed out that warnings from the Rangers might be more effective than ticketing and that we were now starting to warn each other, blowing whistles, texting, and using other methods, about the presence of Rangers in the woods, which is not something that we should have to do.