The road to hell runs through the Arkansas legislature.
It could open up a can of worms, there’s no doubt about that. But our intentions were pure.
That’s Arkansas state Rep. Shirley Borhauer, a 76-year-old grandmother and former schoolteacher, on Arkansas’s latest law: Act 858, which modifies Arkansas Code § 5-68-502, rendering it unlawful to—
display material which is harmful to minors in such a way that minors, as a part of the invited general public, will be exposed to view such material… provided, however, that a person shall be deemed not to have displayed material harmful to minors if the… lower two-thirds (2/3) of the material is not exposed to view and segregated in a manner that physically prohibits access to the material by minors…
It also forbids allowing a minor to view, “with or without consideration, any material which is harmful to minors.”
You’ll be wanting to know how Arkansas law defines what is “harmful to minors.”
...that quality of any description or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse, when the material or performance, taken as a whole, has the following characteristics:
(a)The average person eighteen (18) years of age or older applying contemporary community standards would find that the material or performance has a predominant tendency to appeal to a prurient interest in sex to minors;
(b)The average person eighteen (18) years of age or older applying contemporary community standards would find that the material or performance depicts or describes nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse in a manner that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors; and
(c)The material or performance lacks serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors.
Oh, well. That’s nice and precise, isn’t it. Hard to see how anyone could ever quibble over those terms.
Most of these quotes nicked from Newsarama’s excellent summary of what this dreadful law could mean for comics (“Best-case scenario—some kids may not get their hands on a Penthouse. Worst case—every single comic book retailer in the state is brought up on charges by the close of business Thursday”). There’s also the possibility that bookstores and libraries will have to set up “adults-only” sections, behind which they can hide such dangerous material as Of Mice and Men. And every librarian and small retailer in the state will have to stay up late with all their new acquisitions, vetting them, trying to figure out if some “average” Arkansas cop with an axe to grind, or DA with an election coming up, if one of them walks into the store and sees this out where minors can view it, will it land me in a ruinous lawsuit?
The ACLU is on the case, of course. The Times-Record has some coverage, and also includes some choice quotes from the sponsor of Act 858, Rep. Kevin Anderson (R [of course!]-Rogers), who calls it a “parents’ rights bill”:
The intent was not to make any dramatic conflicts or limitations in folks’ rights or consumer’s rights. The intent was to get it out of the reach of minors. I tried to take a common-sense approach to addressing the problem to make sure parents’ rights are protected without dramatically affecting the right to free speech.
Kevin? Buddy? Word of advice? You want to avoid dramatic conflicts and limitations in folks’ First Amendment rights, you know what? You don’t pass dumbass laws like this. Okay? You have a problem with your kid seeing whatever-it-is you see on comic books that’s harmful to minors? Don’t let your kid go to comic book shops. Don’t want your kid seeing the Dixie Chicks naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly? Keep your kid away from magazine racks. Uncomfortable with the idea of your kid picking up new ideas from books you haven’t approved? Forbid your own damn kid from going into bookstores and libraries. Leave the rest of us alone, okay? I don’t care how “pure” your intentions are, you don’t pass a sweeping law aimed at censoring reality and the way we look at it and talk about it with each other in support of your own stunted, futile, horribly limited idea of protecting minors and then get to claim you “tried to take a common-sense approach.”
And one more thing? I don’t care how many rules you put into place, how stringently you try to shield your kid’s eyes from the nature of the world as it is—your kid already knows what the word “fuck” means. Your kid’s seen a picture of a naked woman lying back all come-hither on satin sheets, a picture that’s almost falling apart from where it’s been folded six or eight times and stuffed in a wallet. Your kid’s sat at the back of the bus on the way to camp and giggled when the dog-eared copy of Lace got passed to them, the one with the crease in the spine that falls open to that scene with the playboy and the goldfish. Okay? Your kid already knows. You can either admit that, deal with it, give your kid the benefit of your own insight and experience in dealing with this seamy side of pop culture that we will always have with us, you can try to communicate the principles you think your kid will need to make it past this Scylla and Charybdis we all negotiated ourselves back in the day—or you can pop your fingers in your ears and cry “La la la la la la la” and stick your head in the sand until it all goes away and your kid is 18 and magically able to handle this stuff and you don’t have to think about it ever. It’s your choice, what you want to do yourself, with your own kid.
What you can’t do is drag the rest of us into the sand with you. Okay?
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Argh. This shit always drives me nuts. My mother, for all her faults, gave me a long leash when it came to what I read, saw or listened to. Did I turn into a pervert? A criminal? No, I just have a refined sense of humor. ;) But seriously, there is no blood on my clownsuit, thank you very much.
Even more vexing: Why should the public discourse be scrubbed up by fears of what little ones might accidentally overhear? I have great sympathy for those who find that much of the discourse has coarsened, but not because we talk frankly about sex; rather we talk stupidly about sex. Cf. any Bud Light or Coors commercial. Or most stand up on Comedy Central. Or the latest issue of Maxim. Yet the answer is not to penalize this stupidity with more stupidity, and certainly not to codify free speech abridgements in law.
Oooo! High dudgeon! High dudgeon!