Intellectual disability

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Intellectual disability				January 23, 2008

It’s that time of year again.

Thanks to the November elections and recent appointments, the reconstituted Williamsburg-James City County School Board is clucking and squabbling like hens that have been fed tainted corn. They desperately need to go on one of their notorious touchy-feely retreats up in Richmond and get over it all.

Nor are things much better for the rightishly transformed James City County Board of Supervisors. There the developer-funded Republican elephants are tromping all over the two remaining Democrats, who folded their tents and refused to vote when the time came to elect a new chairman. If this is the type of civility we’re to expect from these china shop bullies, we might just as well bus them off to Richmond with the School Board. Perhaps some facilitator can drum it in into their heads that power grabs should not be their primary concern.

For pure entertainment, however, you can’t beat the reappearance of the circus up in Richmond that coincides with this year’s session of the General Assembly. Though the Democrats now control the Senate, the House of Delegates has welcomed back many of the usual suspects, and they are not disappointing those of us who revel in their ability to reach new levels of ludicrous lunacy.

Setting the tone for the new session is a bill from a Fairfax delegate that would change all references to the “mentally retarded” in the Virginia code to “intellectually disabled.” While references to the mentally retarded are certainly outmoded and should be changed, “intellectually disabled” is not what we want here. The problem is that there are too many perfectly sane people out there whose intellects have been willfully disabled by their own laziness or a penchant for abject stupidity. Indeed, many of them are in the House of Delegates.

Consider the following.

In her desire to make crystal clear what constitutes indecent exposure, Del. Kristen Amundson (D-44^th) wants you to know that when some nut “makes an obscene display or exposure of his person or private parts thereof,” he will be committing a Class 1 misdemeanor if it is done “with the intention of being seen by others.”

Really? Hasn’t the point of flashing always been to be seen by others? I know of very few who find it emotionally satisfying to flash to country corn fields and squirrels. But all that is now clarified. If you’re going to flash, make sure you have an audience, and preferably one of humans.

Not to be outdone by that bit of legerdemain, Del. Lionell Spruill (D-77^th), in gross emulation of last year’s embarrassing droopy drawers fiasco, has come up with an equally intellectually disabling bill that would “prohibit the display on or equipping of any motor vehicle with any object that depicts, represents or resembles human genitalia.”

Evidently Spruill was riding behind a truck that had draped over the rear license plate what looked like the representation of male genitalia, and he found that “obscene.” He also wondered what children might ask if they saw such a display.

Frankly, I’m not sure what makes genitalia any more obscene than elbows, knees, big toes or belly buttons, though I suppose in the minds of some it has to do with sin and sex. But let’s face it. Without the wonders of genitalia none of us would be here, including those kids who might question the function of our idiotically labeled “private parts.”

What is most bothersome about this faux bill is that it forbids the appearance of anything that might resemble human genitalia. Are police now going to be able to pull over the poor guy who has golf balls dangling from his rear view mirror? Or who sticks a wiggly snake in his back window?

Why are we so obsessed with such stuff?

While, according to The New York Times, the National Library in Paris is proudly presenting a show called “Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret” that offers 350 sexually explicit literary works, grainy old pornography films and depictions of masochism, sadism and inflated genitalia, we’re completely flummoxed by some trucker who displays what appear to be genitalia on the back of his rig. Or by the Sex Workers Art Show, which, even before it’s been finally approved, has the sexually squeamish wagging fingers and flapping fulminations at William & Mary president Gene Nichol.

There are other equally intellectually disabling bills on the horizon, such as the one that makes it a felony to steal a cat (but not a parrot) or another requesting a license plate that says “Shag Dance Clubs of Virginia.” Or HJ 220, which designates June 12 in 2008 and forever after as Philippine Independence Day in Virginia. Another day, I suppose, on which schools and the rec center will be closed.

Yes, intellectual disability is rampant and reaching plague-like proportions around here. In fact, it has become so evident among local board members and state legislators that I suspect those with true mental health issues would shun such a designation. It’s far worse than the one people of good will are attempting to change.