BREAKING: In Hoboken, you can now dress like the opposite sex (but you still can’t sell dirty books)

HOBOKEN — In a day and age when same-sex marriage is legal across the United States and gay pride parades are as common as those for any other group, Hoboken is working to catch up with the times.
On Wednesday Sept. 2 the City Council voted to approve changes to what they referred to as an “outdated” law that could offend transgender residents and visitors.
Prior to the vote yesterday, appearing in public in clothing of the opposite sex was considered by law to be “indecent exposure” and could be penalized, according to outdated ordinance 145-19 Indecent Exposure. The law originally said “No person in this City shall appear in any street or public place in a state of nudity or in a dress not belonging to his or her sex, or in an indecent or lewd dress…” The council struck out the part about “in a dress not belonging to his or her sex” and changed “lewd dress” to “lewd attire.”
The change was approved 9-0 after being introduced in August.
However, the ordinance will still advise that people can’t “sell or offer to sell any indecent or lewd book, picture or thing or shall exhibit or perform any indecent, immoral or lewd play or other representation.”
Might “lewd exhibition” apply to the council meetings themselves? There is an election coming in November, so things are bound to go south fast.
“It was my feeling that the ordinance was outdated, to put it diplomatically, and could be construed as offensive to transgender residents or had their freedoms were constricted based upon the restrictions on the ordinance on the way they dress,” said City Council President Ravinder Bhalla during the meeting.
Bhalla – who sponsored the ordinance along with Councilman David Mello and Councilman Michael Russo – added at the meeting that he doesn’t feel “there should be a connection between the way you dress and what your sex is.”
The ordinance will still ban public nudity, so things won’t quite mirror Cole Porter’s concern in the 1930s:
If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like,
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose.
When ev’ry night the set that’s smart is in-
at nudist parties in
Studios.
Anything goes.