Journo

You Rascally, Vibrating Rabbit!

Threats to us raunchy, randy, and oh-so-naughty secularists

If Cape Codders and Islanders occasionally get fed up with the ridiculousness of local politics, the Cape Wind debacle, and the always absurd culture of seasonal tourism, they can just take a peek at their Rhode Island neighbors for a taste of relativism. For no where else on the planet does local politics matter as little as it does here, or inspire as much hysteria. Please take a moment to imagine the rabbit in Rep. Singleton's hands is equipped with a vibrator.

Rep. Rick Singleton of Rhode Island, erstwhile neighbor of mine and, coincidentally, erstwhile member of the Republican Party, introduced a bill last week only slightly less ridiculous than his Easter Bunny initiative, but potentially more threatening to us raunchy, randy, and oh-so-naughty (how naughty? very naughty) secularists.

By now, Rhode Island residents are aware that Singleton, brave man, stands firmly against sex toys and pornography in our public schools. And I, for one, am glad he clarified that, because when I'd heard he left the Republican Party to become an Independent, I shook a little in my pink Docs, afraid he'd become a tree-hugging, dildo-embracing, free-love Libertarian hippie like myself and every other registered Independent in, say, some nameless town in New Hampshire where residents still don't wear seatbelts.

So this new bill is really great.

Except when it isn't-except when you're a health teacher bringing a dildo to sex-ed to teach older teens how to use condoms properly, and except when you're an English teacher trying to teach Lady Chatterley's Lover. Then maybe that bill is not so great. Maybe it isn't even great if you're just a substitute teacher and happen to have a little bag from Miko in your purse that no one, certainly no student, will ever have to see, or a copy of O. Maybe then this bill less than great, threatening prison time and fines up to $1,000 for actions which, if discovered, should illicit no more reaction than a self-conscious blush or a raised eyebrow.

Part of the beauty of our constitution is the implication that we have rights above and beyond what is outlined on paper-some are unalienable, to be sure, and some are unspoken, like the right to privacy, the right to stow our Rabbit^TM vibrators in our handbags and trust that they'll go undiscovered when we're out in public (except at airports, natch). The right of students and teachers to read whatever they can get their hands on, whatever seems fun, or interesting, or artistic, whether or not Rick Singleton and cronies see any "value" in it.

Singleton's main priority as representative, it seems, is to find those quiet rights-the rights we don't name, in part because we should never have to-and squash them. The right to rename the Easter Bunny if it fits our Evil Literary Agenda; the right to speak whatever language we call our own, English, Spanish or Klingon; the right to read Ulysses or to study the photography of Alfred Stieglitz, Annie Leibovitz, or Michelangelo's Leda and the Swan.

If it sounds absurd, it is. Laws already exist to cover the kind of malicious action implied by age-inappropriate behavior: verbal and physical harassment and abuse, sexual harassment, assault. All these things are already illegal, making a law of this kind against porn and toys not only redundant but also scarily intrusive.

Heck, Texas just repealed their anti-sex-toy law; surely we can't be showed up by a red state?

Singleton serves mainly as a shining example of the classical literary outdoing topos-a politician so intent on proving his moral values, his respect for tradition, his stoicism in the face of Magic Bullet vibrators and lube that glows in the dark, that he loses sight of whatever the heck he was supposed to be doing in the first place. His unabashed, posturing conservative earnestness smacks of the waffling Mitt Romney, whose presidential bid should have made all New Englanders feel squicky and unclean. Rhode Islanders should feel similarly about Singleton's presence in our legislative body.

Singleton's disembarkation from the Good Ship GOP, a reaction, he says, to the Iraq War, sparked some one-liners that I'll quote here for no other reason than to encourage sexual innuendo of the worst  kind:

On political jabs: "They said, ‘Here comes the independent man.' I said there are two of us in the building--one on top and one in the chamber."

On his new assigned seat: "I'm right in the middle of the whole thing. I like being on the aisle, easy to get in and out..."

On Democrats: "I think I'd like to see how the other side operates."

I know I do--and the only solution may be a trip to Miko. Want to come?