By Jana Hill
For the Herald
MILL CREEK — Just like an Old West sheriff, John Robinson wants to clean up the town. But he wants to do it by banning vulgarity in public.
While his efforts have the mayor’s support, Robinson is going to need a large posse of supporters to get anything done.
Robinson, 71, wants Mill Creek to be more like his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y., in the 1930s. There, the nuns from St. Theresa’s Parochial School had a Legion of Decency in south Buffalo.
Students, one of them a 10-year-old Robinson, asked merchants to hang a sign — under the threat of a community boycott — condemning magazines that showed scantily clad women.
About a decade later, Robinson viewed the then newly released movie "Gone With the Wind." He was in the shocked audience when Rhett Butler uttered, "Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn."
Mill Creek is getting further from those standards, and Robinson wants city leaders to do something about it.
Last summer, Robinson was shopping when he was confronted with someone wearing an obscene T-shirt.
"As I talk about it, my blood starts pumping and my Irish gets up," Robinson said from the home he shares with his wife of 49 years, Janet.
He confronted the young man and said, "That’s disgusting, and so are you for wearing it."
The man "just grunted and walked away," Robinson said.
Robinson called police, but an officer told him there was nothing that could be done. Wearing a T-shirt like that is a First Amendment right.
"There’s something wrong in this country when you can stand on a street corner and yell these things," Robinson said. "I think that’s a misinterpretation of what the Founding Fathers had in mind."
Mayor Terry Ryan was once confronted with a similar item of clothing at the post office when he had his then-5-year-old son in tow. Ryan turned to his son, in earshot of the coat-wearer, and said, "There’s just a lot of losers in this world."
Ryan has met twice with Robinson to discuss the T-shirt issue. He told Robinson, "I’m not only sympathetic to what you’re saying, I support it."
Robinson said the freedom of decent people is compromised because the First Amendment extends to vulgar behavior. The intent of such a T-shirt is "to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass," Robinson said. "They’ve upset my peace of mind."
Mill Creek Police Chief Bob Crannell said the issue isn’t black and white.
"Beauty is kind of in the eye of the beholder," he said. "You could ask seven people what offensive is, and you’d get seven different answers.
"I think you can ask people to be polite, but you can’t demand it."
To help Robinson accomplish his goal, city leaders sent Robinson to the Mill Creek Business Association. As private property owners, they can ask someone to leave if they don’t like a behavior or attire.
"They have a right to refuse service," Crannell said.
Stan McKenzie, president of the group, discussed the offensive T-shirt issue after Robinson made a presentation at two meetings. But the association decided each business would handle incidents individually.
"If they feel it’s ‘No shirt, no shoes and no dirty labels on their shirts,’ that’s their decision as a business owner," McKenzie said.
Robinson said he supports free speech, but he doesn’t support people using vulgar language in public.
Others disagree.
"If all (the First Amendment) did was protect speech most people agree with, it would be meaningless," said Doug Honig, public education director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
Robinson doesn’t think something like the T-shirt incident would have happened in Mill Creek five years ago. And the retired nuclear physicist expects civility to degrade even more if something doesn’t change.
Robinson used an analogy of a lobster being cooked in water that slowly increases in heat. If dropped in a boiling pot of water, it flails. But if heated slowly, it hardly reacts at all.
"The end result is the same. But he doesn’t even know what’s happening. I think that’s what’s happening to our society."
Jana Hill writes for the Enterprise Newspapers. She can be reached at janahill@heraldnet.com or 425-673-6533.
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