‘Free Speech Advocate’ Arrested at Mall

A man wearing a shirt, pants and hat carrying messages that condemned God and monogamy and encouraged masturbation and a vegetarian diet was arrested Wednesday at the Sherman Oaks Fashion Square mall, police reported.

Bob Steffen, 29, of Redwood City, was originally booked on suspicion of violating a state law that prohibits “fighting words” in public places where such messages are likely to provoke violence, authorities said.

The booking was later changed to trespassing, said Sgt. Brett Papworth of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Steffen was arrested about 1:45 p.m. after mall customers complained that they were offended by his shirt, which carried, among other phrases, an obscene condemnation of God, Papworth said. Another message on his hat read: “I hate God.”

The front of his pants was printed with a vulgar sexual message. “Masturbate and be free,” was one of the messages on his shirt. “Monogamy rots” was another.

His clothes also contained less unconventional messages. His right pant leg read: “Women are equal.”

Steffen refused to leave the grounds when guards asked him to and “made a statement about his free speech rights,” Papworth said.

No one from the mall’s administrative offices or security department could be reached for comment.

The messages he wears, Steffen said in a telephone interview from the Van Nuys jail, are not designed to make people angry but rather to educate them and make them think.

“My primary view is that if people do not express themselves in society, and if they are isolated, they fear one another,” Steffen said. “So I wrote everything I believe, all my assumptions on my shirt, so people can see who I am from a distance.”

So after a two-month tour of malls and shopping centers in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he said he was threatened by Menlo Park police officers with a psychological evaluation unless he cleared out, Steffen traveled south to test the tolerance level here, he said.

Steffen was released from the Van Nuys jail by authorities around 7:30 p.m., he said. They loaned him a pair of pants because they refused to return his clothing, he said. They also gave him a June 22 court date in Van Nuys.

In the meantime, the free speech advocate plans to simply design another outfit and test the waters in another part of town.

“I do enjoy attention, I won’t deny that, but I am trying to educate,” he said after his release.

“I’m an advocate of free speech.”