Foul mouthed folly

My late beloved mother used to say, “Old age is not for sissies.” My getting laid low last week by an arthritis/gout attack showed me Mom was right. That’s why I missed getting a column done and rewrote a 1999 variation for this week.

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In addressing five vital rights, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, “The Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.”

Two hundred and forty years later, no thinking person believes our founding fathers intended that sentence to mean, “It is OK for loud mouthed, filth talking people to say whatever they want, whenever they want in public places.”

My take is simple: “Those who want verbal garbage in their home are welcome to it, but don’t dump it on everyone else’s porch.”

It is not difficult in some public areas to hear a mindless mouth befouling the air with scatology. Reports are on law logs daily. Somehow, foul mouths seem to have become a status symbol among certain adults and has spread to impressionable young. Television is saturated, but there is an off switch.

We’ve noticed much squalid drivel emanating from some teenagers. Recall an out of control snowboarder almost hitting one of the “Over The Hillers.” The boarder released a torrent of obscenities and finished with, “Besides that, you bleeping bleep-bleep, I’m a girl.” My friend sadly replied, “Maybe a girl, but certainly not a lady.”

There are circumstances where the worst of human times dissolve the veneer of civilized behavior, but it is certainly not at the city beach or ball game. It happens where people are dying and humanity is reduced to animal level. There is no such justification for that mindset in our day to day lives. Freedom of speech is not a right to pollute the public air with filthy language.

There are rare occasions when courageous citizens press charges. Can remember two locally accused people taking their right to befoul the public atmosphere to the Montana Supreme Court. They both lost. One was a 1988 arrest and conviction in Whitefish, and one from Columbia Falls in 1991. In the Whitefish case, our highest court said, “The ordinance is not unconstitutional and the accused was properly convicted.”

The last time I checked, a Montana statute is against “threatening, profane or abusive language.” Some cities go further, with the Whitefish ordinance forbidding the “uttering of obscene, profane, vulgar or indecent language ... in a public place ... in view or hearing of another person or persons.”

I’m no saint. Have done some serious cussin’ but never to impress the public. High quality cussin’ does not require the gutter words for anatomy and sex acts.

There will always be “dirty talkin’” around the fire at men’s hunting camps. But why the arrogant loss of respect for girls and women? “Mixed company” discretion is a laugh to the new breed, and worse, too many young women also seem to enjoy displaying their knowledge of foul talk.

Few years back, a judge in Standish, Mich., upheld the validity of an 1897 state law which makes it a crime to use foul language in front of children. Defendant in the case was a 24-year-old, Timothy Boomer. He was accused of going on a three-minute barrage of four-letter profanity in front of a woman and her two children, after he fell out of a canoe.

In his ruling, the judge said, “If Mr. Boomer’s words, when used as they were, were constitutionally protected speech, then a person could stand on a crowded public beach and shout those same words all day.” Judge Allen Yenior added, “This cannot be what the framers of the Constitution and the First Amendment intended to protect.”

Only the most desperate of hungry lawyers, and the most rabid ACLUers, might disagree. Most of regular citizens are neither one of these types.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.