No buts about it: Man acquitted of mooning charges

WASHINGTON — This week, a judge in suburban Washington, D.C., ruled that mooning is a cheeky yet legitimate form of communication.

The truth is that words frequently fail the human species. If you want to send a message, don't call Western Union; an even older, surer technology might serve. Unbuckle, bend and let it shine.

What's the message?

"He was showing his disapproval. ... It was intended to offend, in the sense of being critical," says lawyer James Maxwell, speaking of his client, Raymond McNealy, 44, of Germantown, Md.

Last June, exasperated by a feud involving a homeowners association, McNealy was moved to moon his neighbor Nanette Vonfeldt, a member of the association's board, who was accompanied by her 8-year-old daughter.

McNealy was put on trial for indecent exposure — and found guilty last fall. His misbegotten moon could have cost him three years in prison and a $1,000 fine. After an automatic appeal, this week the verdict was reversed.

Mooning is a blunt instrument to communicate just the sort of disapproval/contempt/derision that homeowners associations can elicit. It is not particularly nice or well-mannered.

As Circuit Court Judge John Debelius III said in the acquittal, the act is "disgusting" and "demeaning." McNealy, who is retired on disability from his family's home-improvement business, might have experienced a different judicial outcome, added the judge, if he had been on trial for "being a jerk."

Debelius also said, "If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty."

Maxwell considers his court victory a nice bit of legal reasoning: "With hard work, we cracked the case, no buts about it."

Not so fast, says Montgomery County State's Attorney Doug Gansler: "This is not a blanket permission slip to moon in Maryland." He says he'd prosecute again if an alleged mooner intended his act as a crime.

Mooning, or references to buttocks as moons, turns up in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. The Oxford English Dictionary traces mooning as an organized activity to, big surprise, California in the early 1960s, and offers published examples such as: "(1994) The crew of a hovering American helicopter removed their trousers and mooned at the Russians."

At a time some say civil-liberties are being restricted (the USA Patriot Act is silent on mooning), it may be comforting that the right of Marylanders to moon has been affirmed.