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Banning Cusswords: Making a list

By David Ferguson

Not all ideas for legislation get filed as bills. An idea can have a good intent and still not make it past the idea stage.

It was the late 1980’s or early 1990’s and I was working for the Arkansas General Assembly, writing legislation. A supervisor said, “Hey, I bet you can help me. I have to write a bill prohibiting cusswords and need help coming up with the list.” I don’t know why he thought I could add words but somehow I managed to add… several.

I vaguely remember why cusswords became an issue. It is my recollection a police officer in Pulaski County tried to arrest someone for wearing a t-shirt or for displaying a bumper sticker that said “Bullshit.” The officer had to let the fellow go because he couldn’t find an applicable law. This didn’t sit well with a legislator from south Arkansas who wanted to fix the problem with new legislation.

To keep the proposed law from being declared too vague, the legislator’s solution was to specifically list every cussword that couldn’t be displayed.

My colleague and I started listing cusswords and variations of cusswords until the novelty soon wore off. Then we got down to the real problem, which was the legislation would have the opposite effect from what the legislator wanted to accomplish. Instead of stopping the display of cusswords it would have published them.

Once filed, the bill would have been part of the public record and there would have been lots of requests for a copy from all over the country. If such a bill had become law, the list would have been published in the Acts of Arkansas and sent to libraries across the state where it basically, would have become public reference material for kids wanting to learn more cusswords. And obviously there would have been constitutional issues.

Plus, printing a copy of the state law would definitely be protected speech. Imagine the legislation with all the cusswords printed on a t-shirt. Not good. It would have basically been the equivalent of wearing George Carlin’s seven dirty words routine or a summary of Netflix’s The History of Swear Words.

I hadn’t thought about the cussword bill in years but I happened to think of it while drinking my morning coffee. It made me chuckle to think of the media circus there would have been had the bill been filed.

I guess I have three points.

First, he was a Democrat and he wasn’t alone. At that time is was not uncommon for Democrat legislators to file bills to do such things as ban or regulate obscene materials, to bring back prayer in schools or at least a moment of silence, to penalize the burning of the American flag, and to restrict abortions. Things have changed in the Democrat Party.

Second, sometimes sincere ideas for legislation still come off as silly or funny. Consider the “Governmental Waste Elimination Award Board.” The intent was to reward state employee ideas to save money, but you just couldn’t fix the name. It could have been “Governmental Waste Reduction Award Board” but that didn’t sound right either.  Eventually the board was… eliminated.

Third, not every problem is fixable by legislation. Your goal can be left-wing, right-wing, or right down the middle but some things just don’t have a solution through legislation. Not being able to solve a problem through legislation can be frustrating and can make you want to use just the right cussword. Sorry, but we didn’t keep the list.

 

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