Ridiculous!
Australia’s second most populated state Victoria is about to have a new piece of legislation which police can use their own discretion to fine people for excessive use of swear words or offensive phrases, using the label of “obnoxious amounts.” Offenders can be fined up to $240 bucks.
But who is really to say what the threshold for “obnoxious” is when it comes down to personal opinion and preference??
While we can understand how some people could get upset by swear-word usage, we don’t think fining people for using words is the smartest thing. When it comes to swear words, words are words. They’re used for emphasis, and we can’t really understand the thought-process behind trying to quantify an unquantifiable, opinion-based scale for offensiveness.
We think that as long as it doesn’t spill over into hate-speech (which we wouldn’t really categorize as swearing), obnoxious is just obnoxious and people should ignore it and move on. Even so, people should have the inherent right to a freedom of speech, even when it comes to throwing around the ol’ F-bomb.
So what are the guidelines and limits? What’s excessive? Will cops have to count how many times someone says the word “shit” and when they hit the 7th time they get a citation? Who decides this?
Doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.
Does it make sense to U??
[Image via WENN.]