Penises Break Easily
The First Amendment Not So Much
I have some updates on the Statue of David’s penis. To be clear, the penis itself is exactly as it has been for 504 years—small and flaccid—but I have additional information about it and the situation that caused this biblically based work of the art to become a controversy of biblical proportion.
If you remember, last week I did complicated (and likely inaccurate) math to determine how big David’s penis should be if he were representative of the average male and how big it actually was on the statue. It turns out I could have put my calculator down. As suspected, the math had already been done with much greater precision than I offered.
Thanks to the Big Dick Guide we have all the measurements. David is just under 17 feet tall with a penis that’s about 5.43 inches long. If we scale his height down to an average male at 5.925 feet, the flaccid penis would be 1.95 inches long. That’s far smaller than our modern average 3.61 inches for non-marble penises.
Last week I discussed a few theories about why his penis was so small: penises might have grown some in five centuries; large penises were not valued at the time; and David was in fight or flight mode with everything (and we do mean everything) all tensed up. I spoke with another art historian this week who had a different, more practical, theory. She noted that penises are an appendage and as such they are the parts of the statues most likely to break off or be broken off. Small penises hold up better over time. (Note: this is true of statues, but we don’t have data on whether it’s true of the real thing.)
As for the situation in Tallahassee where a charter school principal was forced to resign after three parents complained that their children had been shown the naked statue without permission, it’s gotten worse for chairman of the school’s board Barney Bishop III. Tallahassee Classical School is only two years old and uses a curriculum it licensed from Hillsdale College in Michigan. The college announced in a press release that it was revoking that license as of the end of this school year:
To set the record straight: This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s 'David' sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education. Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s 'David' and other works of art that depict the human form.
Barney Bishop III told media outlets that he had not heard about the license being revoked and that he thinks this whole situation is being misrepresented by the [liberal] media. He did not fire the principal (true, he asked her to resign), it wasn’t just about the art lesson (true, but according to the principal the lesson was the issue they discussed in the final meeting), and three parents did not say the lesson was pornographic (true, only one did, the others were just mad that they hadn’t been notified). Barney Bishop III—who told us this week that he’s a PR guy—would like the media to “quit saying something that is not factual to make it fit [their] narrow ideology.” In fairness, all of the news stories I read got these basic facts right. The memes and late-night comedians, on the other hand, have been having too much fun to nitpick. Barney Bishop III suggests we all read the coverage in the extremely conservative Epoch Times’ instead (talk about stories written to fit a narrow ideology, facts be damned.)
Lest anyone sees this as poor Barney Bishop III being crushed by liberal media and academia, it should be noted that Hillsdale College is as a conservative institution. In fact, when Governor Ron DeSantis organized a coup at New College, a liberal arts school in Sarasota, one of the six conservative board members he appointed was Christopher Rufo, a dean at Hillsdale. Rufo is a fellow parental-rights activist who stood next to DeSantis as the Governor signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law. DeSantis accused New College, which was known as a progressive school with an active LGBTQ+ community, of indoctrinating students with its “leftist ideology.” According to his chief of staff, the goal of the administration’s hostile takeover of the school was to remake it in the image of schools like Hillsdale.
At least the parents who sent their kids to New College thinking they were getting a true liberal arts education—parents whose rights clearly don’t matter to DeSantis at all—don’t have to worry about art history. Your kids will no longer be able to take gender studies, human sexuality, or any class that even mentions racism, but they can see all the naked statues they want.
Drag Queens and Library Books; Judges Uphold the First Amendment
Two federal judges stepped up for the First Amendment in cases that dealt with drag queens and library books. While Drag Story Hours at libraries—where men in fancy sequins, high heels, and glitter eye shadow read classic children’s books to the small and enthralled—have become an issue in some communities, this week they were the subject of two separate legal cases albeit with a lot in common.
The first is a suit brought against Tennessee’s new drag show ban by an LGBTQ theater group in Memphis called Friends of George’s. In truth, the word drag does not appear in the contested law. The new legislation discusses “adult cabaret performers” and bans “adult-oriented performances” that are “harmful to minors” from “taking place on public property” and “in the presence of minors under 18.” Friends of George’s (the Plaintiffs) argued that this is overly vague, unnecessary because obscenity laws already exist in the state, and harmful to performers who could be charged with felonies.
The state countered that the law was necessary and complementary to the existing obscenity rules because it added a time, place, and manner restriction. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Parker pointed out that the law does not mention time or manner, and its definition of place was so broad as to be completely useless. He writes:
What exactly is a location on public property or a “location where an adult cabaret entertainment could be viewed by a person who is not an adult”? Does a citizen’s private residence count? How about a camping ground at a national park? What if a minor browsing the worldwide web from a public library views an “adult cabaret performance”? Ultimately, the Statute’s broad language clashes with the First Amendment’s tight constraints.
He also rejected the state’s assertion that the Plaintiff didn’t have standing in this case because none of its performers had yet to be charged under the law (which hasn’t actually gone into effect yet) and therefore could not argue they’d been harmed. He said:
Absent an injunction here, Plaintiff will be barred by criminal penalties from engaging in protected First Amendment expression. Because of the Statute’s vagueness and overbreadth, it is unclear whether Plaintiff’s performances may be penalized. If the Statute takes effect and Defendants prosecute Plaintiff, it will likely suffer irreparable harm with criminal sanctions. These penalties carry with them, among other things, potential loss of liberty and great reputational harm. But even without enforcement, the vague and overly broad nature of the Statute can have a chilling effect on speech.
Parker ordered a temporary injunction which keeps the law from taking effect for two weeks but could be extended. Mark Campbell, president of the board of Friends of George’s told media outlets, “We won because this is a bad law. We look forward to our day in court where the rights for all Tennesseans will be affirmed.”
Plaintiffs in Texas are celebrating a similar victory regarding library books that had been unceremoniously removed from the Llano County libraries. The banned titles include Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson; Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak (I just mentioned Mickey’s penis last week); It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health by Robie Harris; Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings; My Butt is So Noisy by Dawn McMillan; and Larry the Farting Leprechaun by Jane Bexley, among others.
If you see a pattern in the subjects of these books, you’re not alone. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman also noticed. While the Defendants tried to argue that these books were removed as part of a regular “weeding” exercise, Pitman didn’t take the bait.
Maybe he got suspicious because the library was literally closed for three days for the purpose of “checking the shelves for inappropriate books.” Or, maybe it was because the library board was disbanded and replaced with people like Bonnie Wallace who suggested pastors “… organize a weekly prayer vigil on this specific issue… May God protect our children from this FILTH.” Regardless, Judge Pitman wrote:
Whether or not the books in fact qualified for ‘weeding’ under the library’s existing policies, there is no real question that the targeted review was directly prompted by complaints from patrons and county officials over the contents of these titles.
He also cited the First Amendment in his decision, writing:
Although libraries are afforded great discretion for their selection and acquisition decisions, the First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination.
Like the case in Tennessee, the judge ordered a temporary injunction and gave the library system 24 hours to return the books in question to the stacks and re-enter them in the catalogue system. He also ordered that the books remain in place until further court action on this case is resolved.
These cases are not over, and with a federal court system that has been heavily influenced by the Trump administration there may be setbacks. Still, in this new era of state laws that try to ban books, silence teachers, and prevent free expression of opposing views, it’s nice to see that the First Amendment still has some teeth.
I say we all celebrate by watching Kelsea Ballerini sing “If You Go Down, I Go Down Too” with a bunch of drag queens at Sunday night’s Country Music Awards.