Michelle Palmer, 36, and Vince Acors, 34, were on the wrong beach at the wrong time. The British couple were arrested last July in Dubai on charges of having sex outside of marriage, public indecency and drunkenness – in other words, for having a good time while on vacation.
Whether or not they actually had intercourse, which they denied, they were certainly screwed over by the authorities of this ostensibly freewheeling Gulf Emirate. The couple’s sentence was suspended by a judge today — but only after a spending several months in a Dubai prison.
By now everyone knows that Muslim countries tend to be more Puritan than the Pilgrims, but what got Palmer and Acors into hot water was not so much the prevailing and arguably outmoded social mores as the siren call of coastal canoodling. Their ordeal raises important questions for travelers heading to sunny climes this time of year – just how much can you take off, and when does having fun cross the borderline into the danger zone?
Sex and Shari’a are bad bedfellows. In a quasi-worldly locale like Dubai, you can’t legally kiss in public. If you’re gay, you must pretend to be otherwise, for homosexuality is outlawed. And if heterosexual sex on the beach is enough to land you in jail, you don’t even want to think about what would happen for gay sex, or (heavens!) the appearance of it, on the sand. The first defense against any difficulty arising out of, ahem, being yourself, is obviously to keep that swimsuit locked in place. And that’s the real shame.
For the lure of travel is not only that it takes us far from the familiar, but that it catapults us into exotic, often beautiful settings which are sometimes eroticized by the simple fact that we won’t be staying for very long.
Who can forget a young Brooke Shields baring it all for Christopher Atkins for a dip in The Blue Lagoon? And why should paradise come with a dress code? Of course, one person’s paradise could be another person’s permanent home, and that’s where the friction begins.
Consider Saudia Arabia. The conservative kingdom has scorching temperatures and 1,640 miles of coastline, but ladies who take their tops off at public beaches risk getting fined, caned by members of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (although the morality squad is reportedly easing up somewhat) and imprisoned. If you want to sunbathe in total security, better bring your burkha, and prepare to bake because no, they don’t come in white.
Down in Zanzibar, topless bathing is taboo. Bikinis are okay on the pearl-white sand beaches, unless of course there are fishermen or seaweed harvesters within view. Even in town, some signs say “Short skirts are like nude!” And though the water may be deliciously inviting in Malaysia, Egypt and Oman, you had better enjoy it discreetly, which is to say at least partially clothed at all times, to avoid trouble.
Europe is traditionally thought of as the most liberal place to soak up the rays, but even there it pays to be aware of local customs and laws. In Italy, for example, nude sunbathing is still illegal, although going topless is the norm.
And then there’s America, with its immense coastline and inverted moral values (violence in movies good, full frontal nudity in same bad). This past summer, citations for disorderly conduct were handed out in larger numbers than usual on beaches in Fire Island outside New York and in Provincetown, on Cape Cod.
These weren’t exactly for sex on the beach, but rather what police deemed “inappropriate behavior.” But with street violence on the rise, let’s hope that next summer the police clamp down on guns and assaults, and let the boys and girls at the beach do their thing. As Americans, we’re uniquely positioned to set an example of tolerance for the zealots elsewhere who crack down on fun in the sun.
If your travels take you to those beaches where fun and flesh are still taboo, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Anthony Grant is author of Access Paris and former senior editor at Forbes Traveler. He’s based in Manhattan and at www.voyagiste.wordpress.com.
