Daily Progress staff writerA “droopy drawers” bill and a measure to pull state funding from libraries lacking Internet filters have garnered the Virginia House of Delegates a 2005 Jefferson Muzzle Award recognizing disregard for free speech principles.
The House won one of 15 awards this year from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. For the 14th straight year, the awards are being handed out near Jefferson’s birthday, which falls on Wednesday, to people and groups guilty of outrageous freedom of speech violations, center officials said.
“Fortunately they did not pass in the Senate,” Robert M. O’Neil, the Albemarle County center’s director and former president of the University of Virginia, said of the pair of House bills.
The “droopy drawers” measure, sponsored by Del. Algie T. Howell, D-Norfolk, sought to criminalize what O’Neil called a fashion trend among young people – the wearing of low-riding pants that expose underwear. It made Virginia the butt of jokes on comedy shows and in media reports around the world.
The library filter bill would have required public libraries to install content filtering for all Internet access on library computers or face the loss of all state funding. It passed the House 78-16 and was “at best ambiguous on whether library officials had the authority to disable the filters when requested by an adult library patron,” O’Neil said.
“It sounds like we deserved it,” said Del. Mitchell Van Yahres, D-Charlottesville, who voted against both bills. “I think the House was] going a bit farther than usual, which they are wont to do the last couple of years.”
Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, agreed with the Muzzle presentation on the “droopy drawers” bill, which he opposed, but defended the filter bill sponsored by Del. Samuel A. Nixon Jr., R-Chesterfield County, which he supported.
“The fashion police should be on TV and not in district court,” Bell said of the pants bill. Of Nixon’s measure, Bell said, “I think many parents are concerned about what the Internet shows their children, whether at home or in the library, and to keep child porn out of our libraries is a good idea.”
Other winners
The Federal Communication Commission, the nation’s two major political parties and the U.S Department of Homeland Security also won Muzzles for free-speech infringements.
The FCC won for muddying the waters on indecency with its crackdown on Janet Jackson’s breast flashing, which resulted in a $550,000 fine for CBS television while causing greater confusion as to what constitutes indecent material.
The actions by the FCC and the (Motion Picture) Classification and Rating Administration showed “a growing sense that government and private entities should be protecting society from unwelcome material, whether it’s technically indecent or simply offensive and intrusive,” O’Neil said.
The Democratic and Republican national parties won for remaining silent about massive free speech violations during their 2004 presidential conventions in Boston and New York. Some of the cited violations included the mass arrests of peaceful protesters in city streets, a “free speech” pen in which police limited speech of protesters and the requiring of loyalty oaths before granting admission to political party events.
The Homeland Security award was for revoking the work visa of Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan after he accepted Notre Dame University’s offer of a professorship and moved his furniture from Switzerland to South Bend. The department cited no specific security concerns warranting his exclusion.
Gay rights
Individuals in Alabama and Georgia, along with a California school district administration, won awards for vastly different stances on gay rights.
One was an attempt to suppress speech supporting gay rights while another was a bid to prohibit expression of the belief that homosexuality is immoral. A third was a high school principal’s censorship of a school newspaper’s editorials debating whether a student group should meet on school grounds.
In the last case, the Muzzle went to Berkmar High School Principal Kendall Johnson in Georgia for censoring the point/counterpoint editorials debating whether the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Society should be allowed to meet at the high school. Johnson did not let the newspaper, the Liberty, run a “censored” stamp on the page where the editorials would have appeared, O’Neil said.
Alabama state Rep. Gerald Allen won for proposing a bill to prohibit the use of state funds for any purchase of “textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.”
A Muzzle was awarded to the school administration at Poway High School in California for a day-long detention given to a Christian student wearing a T-shirt that said, “Homosexuality is Shameful.”
“It was not a happy day for him,” O’Neil said of the detained student, Tyler Chase Harper, who has since filed a federal lawsuit claiming free speech and religious liberty violations. The suit is pending.
Contact Bob Gibson at (434) 978-7243 or [[email protected]>[email protected].]
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