LAKE CITY, Fla. – I’m guessing that when most people in the adult industry hear about an obscenity prosecution, their minds immediately jump to questions like “What sex acts did those videos depict?” or “Was it pictures of extreme stuff, like fisting or bestiality?”
What likely doesn’t immediately spring to mind is the possibility of the “obscene material” in question being a sticker affixed to a truck — let alone one with nothing depicted on it at all.
Such is the case with an arrest made in Florida over the weekend, when a deputy pulled over a man named Dillon Webb, because Webb was driving a truck with a sticker affixed to its window which read “I eat ass.”
The deputy asserts that the sticker violates Florida Statute 847.011, a law which prohibits “certain acts in connection with obscene, lewd, etc., materials.”
According to the Lake City Reporter, when the deputy asked Webb and his passenger about the sticker, Webb said that they were “just words” – in response to which the deputy asked Webb how a “parent of a small child would explain the meaning of the words.” Webb replied, reasonably enough, that the answer to that question would be “up to the parent.”
When Webb declined to remove the sticker or remove a letter from “ass,” the deputy placed him under arrest. He was later charged with possession of obscene material and resisting arrest, both of which are first-degree
While the Florida statute in question covers virtually any sort of medium one might affix an obscene depiction or text to – including “any obscene book, magazine, periodical, pamphlet, newspaper, comic book, story paper, written or printed story or article, writing, paper, card, picture, drawing, photograph, motion picture film, figure, image, phonograph record, or wire or tape or other recording, or any written, printed, or recorded matter” – the question of whether the phrase “I eat ass” can reasonably be construed as “obscene” is another matter altogether.
Florida law defines “obscene” in a manner very similar to the three-prong Miller test. Under 847.001, it is defined as “material which… the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct as specifically defined herein; and taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
In a tweet linking to an article about Webb’s arrest, attorney Larry Walters noted that his firm once got similar charges dismissed for a client whose bumper sticker read: “Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck.”
Should be interesting. We got one of these obscene bumper sticker charges dismissed for “Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck” https://t.co/GSpChqE567
— Walters Law Group (@WaltersLawGroup) May 7, 2019
Reached for comment on Webb’s case, Walters told YNOT “this charge should never have been brought.”
“Living in a free country requires that we all have a reasonably thick skin,” Walters said. “It’s sad to think that we need police protection from exposure to three words on a bumper sticker. Obscenity cases are increasingly difficult to prove in the current era. This looks to be a waste of tax dollars and an affront to First Amendment rights.”
Of course, there’s always another possibility, one raised by author Mike Albo in a Facebook post: Perhaps the sticker’s message is a literal statement – one with a perfectly non-obscene connotation…
Original bumper sticker photo by Matt Willmann; image has been cropped and modified with black censor bar. Mike Albo post via Facebook
