badassladyknight:

Just when you thought the Arizona legislature was out of bad ideas.

SB 1467, newly introduced in the Arizona State Senate, would force schools and universities to suspend, fine, and ultimately fire any teacher or professor who “engage[d] in speech or conduct that would violate the standards adopted by the federal communications commission concerning obscenity, indecency and profanity if that speech or conduct were broadcast on television or radio.”

For the first offense, you’d get a one-week suspension without pay. For the second offense, two weeks. For the third, a pink slip.

As Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education notes, this law would not only block the teaching of such classics as Ulysses, The Canterbury Tales, and Catcher in the Rye, it’d prohibit historians and law professors from competently discussing campus free speech regulations, since the most important Supreme Court case in that field hinged on a jacket with the slogan “Fuck The Draft” written on it.

It’s also worth noting, as Lukianoff does, that the bill would regulate professors’ actions outside the classroom, which means that merely writing the paragraph above — in a blogpost, a scholarly article, even a private email — would get you suspended.

But it’s even worse than that.

Note the language of the bill: You’re violating the law if you engage “in speech or conduct” that would violate FCC standards if “broadcast on television or radio.” Not public speech or conduct. Speech or conduct, full stop.

If this law passes, it will be illegal for any “person who provides classroom instruction” in the state of Arizona to have sex.

Or pee.

Ever.

I’m pretty sure this is unconstitutional.  Article 2, Section 6 of the Arizona State Constitution states: “Every person may freely speak, write, and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right.”  Although, I guess whoever wrote this bill is going to use that second portion of “abuse of that right” to justify the bill.  I still don’t think it’s constitutional.

Not again, Arizona! What I really take away from all this (besides that Arizona is a shithole, and changing demographics will make the white republican assholes really sorry they ever did this in a decade or two) is that the FCC regulations are outdated and need to be changed if not overthrown.

I mean, what, are our sensibilities so tender that we can’t handle certain words on TV, or discuss Supreme Court cases on the radio? It just doesn’t make sense to me, especially with our strange views on what sort of violence (both sexual and otherwise) is acceptable.

(Source: sarahlee310, via bohemianarthouse)