LOS ANGELES (TNA) – America is supposed to be the land of the free, but can it be that way when millions of women are forced to wear tops to cover their breasts in public?

A group of breast-loving activists doesn’t think so and its members have found a titillating way to fight what they believe is a significant form of political repression -- clothing.

GoTopless.org is inaugurating National Go Topless Protest Day Aug. 23 to protest the inequality that exists between men and women where tops are concerned.

To put it simply: Group members like Donna Newman don’t think it’s fair that men can walk around topless with nary a dirty look, whereas women face potential arrest if they choose to shed their shirts and brassieres.

“Well, you know, before we’re men and women, we are human beings on this planet and we feel that, as women, we should have all the same rights as men,” she said. “A breast is a breast. I have two of them, you have two of them. Why do [women] have to cover them? What’s the problem? What’s in our minds and our education that people are so afraid of when it comes to showing the human body? That’s what we have to deal with, where that fear comes from.”

To that end, the group hopes to expose this issue by holding public protests in 11 U.S. cities on Saturday, Aug. 23: Los Angeles; Miami; New York City; Chicago; Honolulu, Hawaii; Hilo, Hawaii; Austin, Tex.; Berkeley, Calif.; Santa Fe, N.M.; Omaha, Neb. and Bloomington, Ind. Another protest will be held in Denver, Colo., on Aug. 26 at the steps of the Democratic National Convention.

Each protest will feature topless women baring their hearts and souls (among other things) on this all-important issue, but there will be differences. For instance, the Los Angeles rally, which will take place at Venice Beach, will feature performances by a topless opera singer and breast-baring acrobats, while the Miami protest will be more of a march.

“We’ll be marching up the boardwalk, up the sand, up until 4:30, gathering as many people as we can to join us in this effort to change the law and change the way people look at themselves,” said Newman, who is the organizer of the Miami event.

Newman is gratified that support for the movement has been strong with both sexes.

“Guys are going ‘Yippee’ and the women are saying, ‘This is great! I’m going to be there!’” she said.

However, there are still places in the United States where women get arrested from breastfeeding in public and that’s unconscionable. That shouldn’t happen.”

But while men are invited to attend, Newman stresses they don’t need to rip off their own shirts to show their support.

“Men are topless all the time – especially in South Beach, where I’m going to be,” she said.

Newman says she and GoTopless.org president Nadine Gary -- who is organizing the Los Angeles event -- want women of all ages, shapes and sizes to show their support for the issue, “not just those with beautiful breasts”

“We’re all different body shapes so all women are invited,” she said.

Gary agrees and says that while part of the movement is to protest the treatment breast-feeding women sometimes get for feeding their children in public, they also feel that women shouldn’t ignore or minimize the sexual side of breasts.

“If going topless makes a woman feel sensual about her body, there is nothing wrong with that,” she said.

Although women are organizing the events, the concept was created by a man named Rael, who leads a UFO cult called the Raelians. The group believes in, among other things, the importance of sexual freedom and sensuality and that the angels mentioned in the Bible are actually extraterrestrials. The group came to fame in 2002 when one of its members claimed to have cloned a human baby.

According to Newman, Rael was moved to create the topless protest after reading a story about a woman in New York City who was arrested for being topless and later won $29,000 in a court case against the city.

“Now, it is supposedly legal for a woman to be topless in New York City,” Newman said. “Whether they’ll get arrested or not, I don’t know. They might be arrested but set free afterwards.”

Newman compares the Go Topless movement to the Women’s Suffrage movement that took place in the early 1900s, and believes that a woman’s right to bare her breasts will probably be decided state by state.

And she doesn’t expect it to be solved by one Go Topless day.

“Go back to 1916, ‘17, ‘18, when women were fighting for their equality to vote. They won that right, but it took a while,” Newman said.

In order to connect with that earlier struggle for voting rights, GoTopless.org officials chose to hold the event on Aug. 23, because it’s the Saturday closest to Aug. 26, which will be the 88th anniversary of when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.

Newman said they figured there would be more participants if Go Topless Day was held on a weekend, but the group plans to push its plan on politicians in Denver, Colo., by going topless in front of the Democratic Convention on Aug. 26.

Gary says Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain and Hillary Clinton are invited to attend any or all of the events.

“We don’t want people to think this is a partisan event,” she said, adding that the celebrity she most wants to attend one of the Go Topless events is John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, who she jokes is “a bad girl” in the best possible way.

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