It's a real bugaboo, no? Try letting go of the assumption that "legal" equates to "blessed as good and proper". Far as I know, most places it's not against the law to jump off a cliff.
Some time around ten years ago a couple of Eugene's finest responded to a disturbance call in the downtown shopping district. They arrived to find a group of 8 or 10 local youth in front of one of the businesses wearing mud (and nothing else), apparently making some kind of a protest statement. The cops cuffed them, wrapped them up and hauled them in. Looking for the applicable chapter and verse for charging purposes they searched city, county, and state laws and found absolutely nothing. They had no choice but to sheepishly apologize and let them go.
If you watched O'Reilly on one of a couple times over the last few weeks, or Huckabee filling in for him just tonight, you'd know that no law against public nudity, much to his chagrin, remains the status quo in Oregon. Now, the state and the police are not going around saying folks should run around naked in the streets and dig this, almost nobody ever does it (but dang, there's more than a few I see in this college town I sorta wish would).
The state could outlaw it tomorrow and there'd be no constitutional argument against it far as I know (I imagine this state legislature would rather find a way to tax it), but in 140 years of statehood it seems there has not been a compelling need to do that.
Besides the constitutional argument against federal prohibition, I believe most of the legislative arguments for it (things like rampant non-marital, or worse, interracial sex) are utter fallacy and I think the laws deserves a serious revisiting of all the aspects of need and propriety or lack of same. Certainly, if individual states had a justifiable need for some kind of regulation or prohibition it would be within the power of most of their legislatures to enact them.
It's 150. Dang (guess I should take a hit, see if them evil spirits are better at simple arithmetic).
I’ve never argued for federal criminalization. There’s only one constitutional argument to support such a move, and the feds skipped right over that step: Amendment.
But if you think that laws have no effect on public opinion, you’re sorely mistaken. Oh, not in cases of mud-wearing. But cases like public morality such as homosexuality, divorce, drunk driving, welfare, etc. (And if mud-wearing became a problem, you’d see some laws crop up on that too. :-)
Drunk driving is a good example, because public outcry was a significant force in bringing those laws about. Law can reflect as well as reinforce public opinion, and vice versa. In fact, democratic law should absolutely reflect public opinion. (Doesn’t mean it’s just, of course. Merely means it’s what the people want.)