The Missouri supreme court has ruled that a law banning sexually explicit billboards is–gasp!— unconstitutional.
This should come as a surprise to no one. But of course religious groups are stunned. They will try to appeal. Personally, I resent all the JESUS! billboards and the propagandistic ones that declare Pornography Destroys Families, which, as over-the-top claims go is one of the richest.
My solution to this conundrum would be to ban billboards. Period. I hate ’em. And maybe to some people it’s a free speech issue, but I disagree. We have building codes, restrictions on what kind of structure you can build where, what uses you can put land to. If something is Out There Where Everyone Can See It we have all kinds of little provisions to guarantee the neighbors won’t be offended. Lawn art gets slapped in some areas. Probably if you tried to paint your house purple with pink polka-dots, there’s an ordinance somewhere that says you can’t.
I don’t hear anybody claiming such restrictions are violations of free speech.
Other things. In many places, public nudity, even on your own property, is controlled. Sale of certain items–liquor, firearms, and such like–are resticted by zoning laws.
Now if there were nowhere that you could sell perfectly legal items, then there would be a problem, but that’s not the case. Nobody says you can’t have a particular kind of business. Just not on this block, in this section of town.
Billboards, by definition, are public structures. We could ban them. The speech issue only comes in when you allow one group to have billboards but not another.
And that’s what we have here. Churches and so forth would RAGE if they were told they couldn’t put their message in the same medium as a car dealer or a realty company. And rightly so. But they think they can dictate content because they are offended by another group’s message–pornographers. And the court said “It is a public medium and if you can take advantage of it, so can they.”
I say ban them all. I hate billboards. They mess up the scenery. They are an eyesore, not for what they say but for the fact they are THERE.
Just so I don’t leave this post without saying something about content, I would really like someone to very publicly tell these prudes to put a sock in it (or take it out, depending on their particular problem). Protecting the children my–! I did not spend 16 to 21 years struggling to reach adulthood so I could live in a world lacking all things sexual. I want those things. As an adult, having earned my pass by putting up with well-meaning adults who were busy “protecting” me, I choose to live in a sexual-saturated world. Don’t tell me I have to do without because some parent somewhere doesn’t know how to monitor their children’s access.
For one, they really can’t, and frankly probably never could. I got my hands on my first X-rated magazine at 13. I’m a taxpayer, I maintain my property, I contribute to my society, I have morals. It did not stunt me, pervert me, or otherwise cause me to be morally crippled.
People fetishize it in their attempt to condemn it, and thereby turn it into something that their children can’t handle. It is probably no coincidence that some of the most shocking examples of sexual deviance can be found among the profoundly repressed.
But that’s their problem. I don’t want someone telling me I can’t buy Playboy or even Hustler. I don’t want someone telling me that monogamy is the only acceptable lifestyle. I don’t want someone telling me I can’t read Lady Chatterly’s Lover or what have you. I don’t want someone telling my wife she can’t have sexy lingerie or fantasize about [insert male hunk of choice].
I don’t want someone telling me I’m a worm who needs saving because I like recreational sex!
But I do hate billboards. All of them. Even the funny ones. Ban ’em all.
Or put up with whatever gets posted on them.
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