Passing laws and losing wits

So there I was, doing my best dirty old man, skulking about in the books section of the Indianapolis Museum of Art gift shop. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for: a prominently displayed — and within reach of any horny 16-year-old — large (shall we say oversize?) book. On the cover was a suggestively grainy photograph of a half-naked torso, flexed and taut as a bow. The title: Surrealism Unbound.

Dare I say it? I was aroused!

Now, imagine that I was an agent of the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office. Under a law signed by Gov. Daniels March 19, it’s conceivable that I — or some other bluenose with an axe to grind — might be able to approach the manager of the museum’s gift shop and demand to know whether or not the IMA had paid the $250 registration fee required of all business owners selling sexually explicit materials.

What, you might ask, is meant by the term “sexually explicit materials”? According to House Enrolled Act 1042, the law that crept through the Indiana House and Senate on little flat, vice squad feet, such materials are a product or service “that is harmful to minors, even if the product or service is not intended to be used by or offered to a minor; or that is designed for use in, marketed primarily for, or provides for: (A) the stimulation of the human genital organs; or (B) masochism or a masochistic experience, sadism or a sadistic experience, sexual bondage, or sexual domination.”

Now we know what our selfless state legislators were really thinking about as they burrowed their way ever deeper into the thicket of property tax reform.

Somehow this mess of censorious legislation managed to win approval by comfortable margins in both legislative bodies. There appears to have been no public debate on the issue. But then such discussion would have required our elected officials to talk openly about things that, in Indiana, are evidently best reserved for the doctor’s office or the confessional. The bill received final passage on the final Friday afternoon of the legislative session. From there, as if blown by angels, it sailed to the governor’s desk, where it received the Daniels autograph.

Daniels, it should be noted, doesn’t sign just any old bill into law. He appears to actually read these things because, in April, he vetoed a bill aimed at trying to make Indiana more attractive to the film industry. This was interesting because Daniels had given the impression he was in favor of trying to get more movies made here. Nevertheless, the fine print of the film industry bill was enough to make him dig in his heels. A provision to allow unlimited refundable tax credits for media productions under $6 million and a 15 percent credit for other production-related expenses caused Daniels to issue his first veto in two years.

For all his talk about creating a new business model for Indiana, Daniels has been unwilling to nurture a culture here that might make a 21st century business model possible. As economist Richard Florida has pointed out, 21st century professionals “want diversity, low entry barriers and the ability to be themselves.” Daniels’ failure to face down the gay-bashers in his party over the defense of marriage amendment — and now his carelessness in signing this constitutionally dubious legislation in the name of making small towns safe from porn — only sends the message that Indiana is intolerant and uptight.

That communities might want to shield themselves from the coarseness and excesses of the contemporary marketplace is understandable. But the world is not G-rated. Its texture is woven with every form of oddity, temptation, frightfulness and beauty that humans are capable of imagining. Communities need a strong sense of identity — of who they are and what they stand for — to include all this without losing their wits. People in Indiana who think their identity can be made from laws designed to keep people or, for that matter, pictures out have a very unhappy future ahead of them.

House Enrolled Act 1042 should be challenged in the courts. With any luck at all, some judge will strike it down and send it back to the Legislature to be rewritten or, better yet, forgotten.