Pull your trousers up or go to jail, warns Louisiana mayor
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 15 June 2007Call it the battle of the drooping drawers. Across the American South, a cry has gone out to ban sagging trousers that show the wearer’s underwear. Bemused violators of the proposed law will be fined or end up in jail.
Deep in Cajun country, the mayor of the Louisiana town of Delcambre is about to sign into law a proposal that will make it a crime to wear trousers that show underwear. “If you expose your private parts, you’ll get a fine [of up to $500 (£250)],” Mayor Carol Broussard said. Repeat offenders could land themselves a six-month stretch in jail.
… She added: “It’s gotten way out of hand out here,” and advises people who like to wear their pants low: “Just wear it properly. Cover your vital parts. I mean, if you expose your private parts, you’ll get a fine. If you walk up and your pants drop, you get a fine. They’re better off taking the pants off and just wearing a dress.”
… But a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union is puzzled. “Why can’t people just look away?” she asks, pointing out that the laws have to apply equally to males and females. In recent years, Louisiana and Virginia have tried to ban sagging pants, but the efforts went nowhere.
The thing is, people can walk around in their homes as exposed as they want to be. But by ACLU standards, if they’re out in public, allowing them to walk around exposed could sen[d] a message that the [government] endorse[s] [sagging pants].
Fully clothed people no longer feel safe or welcome around people whose clothes might fall off at any moment.
True, those edited quotes are silly. But maybe looking the other way isn’t the panacea that the ACLU spokesman suggested it is after all.
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Indecent exposure is still indecent exposure. There are laws on the books in a lot of communities banning it. Why special cases need to be made for hip-hop style wear is beyond me.
They just need to prosecute existing law.
consider the intent implicit in guys wearing their slacks below their genitals – the intent of this “style” (which severely offends the most enduring elements of African-American culture – that which produced so many eminent contributors to greater American culture) is for adolescent males to ostentatiously present in public their sexual readiness. It is to advertise to all fertile girls and women around them – including and especially in the school room – that they will not hide the physical arousal of their sexual organs, and that all around them should take note, any desire on the part of others that young men maintain privacy respecting their aroused privates, or general desire for civility in relegating one’s gross, impersonal, erotic needs to a private domain apart from everyday encounter in the general society be damned. These low-wearers have no appreciation for any of the latter. What is uppermost in their minds is – their erect members and their desire that everyone around, especially girls and young women should become aware of the same – or of the imminent possibility that the same may pop up in the vicinity of said females. As for treating males and females ‘equally’ – consider how likely women are to lower their clothing to the point that their erect clitori continually threaten public exposure – the absurdity of this exemplifies the stupidity with which the ACLU carries its legalistic formalism, as a weapon of infantile protest against reasonable social mores. The ACLU cannot understand the destructiveness of this incivility – for American public schools or for the larger society. The ACLU has become a childish vehicle for self-styled champions of uninhibited freedom including the uninhibited sexual freedom of children. They do some good work besides, but there are better civil liberties associations, such as People for the American Way, which have priorities more meaningful for a mature politics and are not imprisoned in an overgrown litigiousness over adolescent protest against the kind of self-restraint which is required for civil society, including for the college and law school education of the self-important ACLU warriors against any social rules that may suggest that becoming an adult may require some restraint on the behavior of the young.