Speak Now...
by Matthew North

According to a report in Aug. 24's Albany (NY) Times Union, Timothy Boomer of Standish, Michigan, was sentenced to four days of community service and either a $75 fine or three days in jail for violating a state law — passed in 1897 — that prohibits cursing in front of children. Apparently, during a canoe outing on the Rifle River last summer, Boomer's boat tipped over and, annoyed, he shouted a series of vulgarities, unfortunately within earshot of a woman with two small children and Deputy Kenneth Socia of the Arenac County Sheriff's Department.

Boomer was issued a ticket, and then tried and convicted by District Judge Allen Yenior, but will be appealing his conviction with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (who else?) which contends that Boomer's freedom of speech was violated.

Again, what the fuck is this? Theoretically, at least, freedom of speech is protected by the American constitution, and a close reading of that hallowed text reveals that — surprise! — there's no clause that says "Say whatever you want, but for God's sake don't swear in front of children, especially those pure-as-driven-snow Michigan kids."

These days, minors are both the recipient and the source of about as many vulgarities as adults. They get sworn at by television, by popular music, by magazines, by Web pages ... and they learn to use those bad words right quick, too. My 13-year-old brother recently lectured me on how there are some moments in which "fucked" is the only word that expresses what he really wants to say; a friend of my father's worked in a summer camp for kids from a group home and reports being offended by phrases he'd never heard before — something about hog-tying, anal rape and skunks, specifically.

It's a good thing, by the way, that children are coming up with new ways to twist language to offensive ends because in the Vulgarities Bowl between the world's most popular languages, English is losing badly. Spanish, for example, going the sacreligious route, is far ahead of our mother tongue — you can say "I shit in the milk of the Virgin so that the Christ Child drinks shit" in English, but it doesn't carry the same weight as the original Castilian phrase.

And in Hindi, according to a friend of a friend, "You-fuck-your-brother" is an affectionate nickname, and the absolute worst possible thing you can say is something to the effect of "Why don't you go home and fuck your sister and then jump on the couch and tell her it's the Fourth of July," which, at least in my opinion, beats anything our best have come up with by a lot.

How do you respond to that? "Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut" (thank you, Kurt Vonnegut)? English, as you can see, is weak when it comes to telling people off, so it's a damn good thing — practically patriotic sacrifice — that kids are exposing themselves to shows labeled "TV14LV" and albums with those black-and-white stickers.

Anyway, keeping all of this in mind, this Allen Yenior's efforts to punish Boomer for violating the virgin ears of those kids come across as, at best, cutely anachronistic. The well-intentioned but misdirected act of a good-hearted Midwestern yokel — another V-chip, or parental advisory sticker or television ratings system.

Unfortunately, Yenior enforces the laws of the land. Therein lies the rub. It's bad enough that people want to limit the use of vulgarities in the media, but fining someone and threatening him with jail time for swearing when his canoe tips over because there happened to be kids nearby? Big Brother, anyone? An argument could be made, I suppose, that the exponential increase in the use of bad language in this country represents an unraveling of public morality — it probably does indicate a loosening and/or loss of a certain set of cultural norms.

Swearing is, however, a relatively innocuous pastime. A symptom of other problems, perhaps, but not a cause of them, by any stretch of the imagination. Linguistically speaking, swear words are completely arbitrary — taboos that the speakers of a language invent so that they can have really strong words to use when the occasion calls for it. And politically speaking, fining people for using vulgarities is the first step down towards losing freedom of speech.

If the next court to get Boomer's case is at all intelligent, it will dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous waste of its time, and think rather seriously about firing this Yenior guy — telling him to go fuck himself, so to speak. Freedom of speech in this country is respected to such an extent that even the most extreme groups — neo-Nazis, militias, etc. — are allowed to speak their piece (that is, until anti-hate-speech laws start getting popular), and we're going to start arresting people for swearing?

Vulgarities aren't protected political expression, you could say, but nor are they worth the time and money it takes to prosecute people for using them. Swear words do not corrupt children. Violence and sex might, but swear words do not. Timothy Boomer is a victim of silly morals policing, and we should all hope he's an isolated case. If not, as my brother would say, we're fucked.

E-mail Matthew North at northm at gusun dot georgetown dot edu.