It was gratifying to discover that I wasn’t the only person offended by the large and ubiquitous ads for the “Museum of Sex” that have been appearing on the front of New York City buses in recent months. I complained to the MTA when the ads first appeared and, as expected, received a response citing the authority’s helplessness in the face of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
I’m no constitutional scholar and have never even played one on tv (or even online). But, with apologies to Justice Potter Stewart, I know offensive when I see it.
So do many people, a number of whom attended a recent MTA board meeting and voiced their pain at having to see the ad’s words grow larger before their and their children’s eyes each time an eagerly-awaited bus approached their stop.
I’m an Orthodox Jew – there are more than a few of us in New York, you may have noticed – and I have a positive attitude (as per Judaism’s tradition) toward sexual congress, in the context of a marriage. But public demonstrations encouraging prurient interest in sexuality deeply violate my faith’s insistence on modesty in such matters, and deeply pain me. I have no doubt that all my fellow Orthodox Jews feel equally anguished. And I suspect that many non-Orthodox Jews and many non-Jewish New Yorkers, whether from a place of faith or just refinement of character, feel similarly.
The museum hosts exhibits on topics like erotica, fetish culture, BDSM and sex work. And we do well to take note of its “Super Funland: Journey Into the Erotic Carnival interactive installations,” consisting of a four-floor “adult playground” featuring “creatively designed games, large-scale immersive environments, and carnival-style games of chance.”
Should anyone happen to spot Caligula, do let him know.
And, of course, there is an on-site bar at the museum, and an adult retail shop selling books and souvenirs of a sort easily imagined.
The museum does require that visitors must be at least 18 years old. Children of any age, of course, can ride city buses.
MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said the MTA has an advertising committee that reviews campaigns, but insists that the agency is limited in what it can reject.
It does, however, have to hew to New York State law. One section of which (235.000) prohibits the public display of obscenity. To be sure, the words on the museum ad are not, in themselves, obscene. But the state law defines material as obscene if “its predominant appeal is to the prurient interest in sex, and it depicts or describes [sexual acts] in a patently offensive manner.”
A shame, that “and.”
But MTA ad policy itself (Section B, paragraph 15) requires rejection of ads that “promote an escort service or sexually oriented business. One might argue that an institution dedicated entirely to sex qualifies for that latter category.
Reductio ad absurdum, carrying a proposition to its most extreme potential applications, is, contrary to what some people think, an entirely legitimate way of undermining the legitimacy of the proposed idea.
And so, I would ask New Yorkers who don’t share my or others’ religious scruples to imagine ads on the front of buses that encourage visits to a “Museum of Pedophilia” or a “Museum of Domestic Violence” (that would depict their subjects in all their different forms, perhaps with their own “interactive installations”).
Granted, sex isn’t a crime, but advocating for the decriminalization of an act – like child molestation or domestic violence – is fully protected by the First Amendment. And so, if ads for those imaginary institutions would be rejected by the MTA, the authority would do well to give a second, more critical, look at the ads currently gracing the fronts of many of its buses.
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My most recent Ami Magazine column, “Sad People in Dearborn” – which appeared before Michigan’s Democratic primary – can be read at https://www.rabbiavishafran.com/sad-people-in-dearborn/ .
And a thought on the Torah portion of the week is at https://www.rabbiavishafran.com/reei-whats-with-the-wealth/ .
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