The pertinent passage from the Oklahoma Statutes, Title 21, Chapter 39, Section 1021:
Every person who willfully and knowingly either:
1. Lewdly exposes his person or genitals in any public place, or in any place where there are present other persons to be offended or annoyed thereby;
2. Procures, counsels, or assists any person to expose such person, or to make any other exhibition of such person to public view or to the view of any number of persons, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer;
[#3 and #4 deal with materials of varying degrees of indecency and are not relevant here]
shall be guilty, upon conviction, of a felony and shall be punished by the imposition of a fine of not less than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00) nor more than Twenty Thousand Dollars ($20,000.00) or by imprisonment for not less than thirty (30) days nor more than ten (10) years, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
Now consider the fact that when I was house-shopping last fall, one of the desiderata — though one I wasn't particularly anxious to explain — was a six-foot wooden (none of that chain-link stuff) fence around the entire back yard, and it becomes obvious why this is a matter of interest to me.
And I don't have any burning desire to offend or annoy the neighborhood. (I have a Web site that's offensive and/or annoying enough.) But inasmuch as I'm not on public display in that back yard, I don't see anything particularly heinous about wanting to fend off the possibility of tan lines. What I'd really like to do is negotiate some sort of non-aggression pact with the neighbors; for all I know, they might be thinking the same thing.
Besides, it's hot outside.
