DETROIT -- Timothy Boomer insists he usually keeps his language pretty clean, although his profanity is the subject of a criminal inquiry.
He says he curses maybe once a day, if that. The 24-year-old Roseville, Mich., man says he's just an average guy who works hard at his engineering job and plans to buy his girlfriend an engagement ring.
But in August, on a canoe trip in northern Michigan, Boomer's life took a sharp turn -- all because he said a few choice words when he fell out of a boat in Arenac County, north of Saginaw. First law enforcement got involved. Then the American Civil Liberties Union. Now Boomer finds himself the reluctant star in a First Amendment battle over a 101-year-old state law that forbids cussing in front of women and children.
Boomer has become something of a local celebrity. Strangers on the street have offered their sympathy. A clerk at the grocery store asked whether he was the poor guy who faced criminal charges for a curse. Boomer told the clerk he was; the clerk shook his head and uttered a profanity.
Friends at work call him "convict" and "the curser" and "the swearing guy."
"It gets a little old after awhile," he said.
Stranger still, he's evolved into a national symbol for the decline of American civility.
"It's really bizarre," he said. "Being famous for swearing, that's not my forte."
Boomer's troubles began on Aug. 15 when he fell out of a canoe while heading down the Rifle River. Flopping around in the water, he began yelling in the direction of his friends. He hardly could have anticipated the social consequences.
Boomer won't reveal what he said, but insists his language was good-natured and his voice well-tempered. An Arenac County prosecutor disagrees, saying Boomer angrily and loudly uttered a most offensive particular vulgarity and "various derivatives" over and over.
Worse, assistant prosecutor Richard Vollbach contends, small children were nearby. And screaming cuss words around children isn't the sort of behavior society has to tolerate.
"Maybe in New York City," the prosecutor said, "but certainly not in Standish, Michigan." Standish is the county seat.
Shortly after Boomer's outburst, he and his friends rounded a bend and noticed three sheriff's deputies on the river bank staring at them with binoculars. As Boomer's friends sat dumbfounded in their boats, one of the deputies handed him a misdemeanor citation.
The charge: cussing in front of women and children, which carries a penalty of up to 90 days in jail and a $100 fine.
Boomer got back in his boat, put the ticket in a plastic bag and continued down the river.
Several weeks later, he made a court appearance and was told he would have to return for a second court date. He realized the citation wouldn't go away without inconvenience and cost. He decided to call the ACLU.
William Street, a Saginaw, Mich., lawyer affiliated with the civil liberties group, studied the facts, studied the law and concluded that the century-old statute was "something that a court should just take behind the barn and put a bullet in."
On Jan. 25, a hearing will be held in Arenac County's 81st District Court on the attorney's motion to dismiss the case.
Street says he plans a vigorous assault on the law. He filed a 31-page brief citing numerous cases where the courts have extended First Amendment protection to public swearing. Among them is a U.S. Supreme Court case upholding the right of a Vietnam War protester to enter a courthouse wearing a profanity-inscribed jacket defaming the draft.
Street argues that the U.S. Supreme Court protects most speech except "fighting words" and "obscene" language. And by today's standards, Street insists, whatever Boomer might have yelled certainly isn't obscene.
"What defines 'indecent' language today in American public discourse, in the age of MTV, shock-trash radio and the 'Starr Report' to Congress?" Street wrote in his brief.
Nonsense, say Arenac County prosecutors, who have no intention of dropping the charges. Boomer's conduct wasn't "speech" because "it wasn't an expression of an idea or thought," Vollbach says.
He cites a sheriff's report saying Boomer's voice could be heard a quarter-mile down the river.
"Obviously I don't want to make my living prosecuting potty mouths," Vollbach said, "but the officer thought it was offensive enough to issue a ticket, and I'm going to go ahead and prosecute it."
In recent weeks, as the lawyers have haggled over the First Amendment, Boomer has been alarmed to discover his name invoked as an example of the linguistic excesses of an entire generation.
In Arizona, Boomer's uncle attended a church sermon and the pastor mentioned Boomer's case as an example of how vulgar today's youth had become. Instead of cursing, the pastor intoned, young people should learn to say "Amen."
Several weeks ago, a news crew from CBS flew to Michigan to talk to Boomer for a story on the proliferation of foul language in America. The piece is tentatively scheduled to air in February.
Pub Date: 12/26/98