After a succession of residents and merchants spoke in favor of Wiener's legislation, citing everything from public hygiene to business interests, Taub's seven-year-old son, Daniel, addressed the committee.
"Naked people don't bother me, and they feel like nice people," he said as his mother hoisted him up to the microphone.
Next, Taub's older son, Nebo, announced: "A naked person is like a dressed person. There is no difference."
Finally, Taub's daughter, Inti, delivered the coup de grâce: "If God wanted us to go everywhere wearing clothes, he should have made it so we were born with clothes."
Twenty minutes later, Taub, in sandals and a shift-like dress, took the floor.
"Nudity does not harm children," she began. "Have you ever seen a child cry because they saw a naked person? What do children do when they see naked people? They laugh. It makes them happy, it doesn't traumatize them."
She went on to note that "our bodies are sacred, and an attack on our right to be nude is an attack on sacredness, beauty, love, freedom, art, and creative self-expression." She cited the Declaration of Independence's guarantee of "unalienable [sic] rights," and asserted that body freedom was one such right.
Then, she yanked her dress over her head and stood naked under City Hall's pitiless fluorescents. She gave the audience behind her a girlish wave.
