The Regulation of Pants

I recently read the entire Leaf River Village Code. Okay, not all of it. I skipped some sections, like Title 3, Chapter 8: Fire Insurance Companies (abbreviated 3-8). But I did read others that I really should have skipped, such as 3-6: Raffles and 4-6: Explosives and Fireworks. How could I not read 4-6? I'm stuck inside and looking for divertimento.

When sequestered indoors in winter and reading your municipal code for laughs—in other words, when in my situation—the first place to look for amusement is not, paradoxically, 3-3: Amusements Generally. The real action is in...3-2: Liquor Control!

Judging by page counts in the LR Code, liquor is at best the most heavily-regulated activity in Leaf River and at worst tied for most regulated with 7-6: Sewer Use and Service, and that only due to the latter's abundance of definitions for things like Properly Shredded Garbage, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Compatible Pollutant, Slug, Floatable Oil, Effluent Criteria, Useful Life, and Control Manhole (the last of which goes straight onto my list of potential gay bar names). Without those useful definitions, 3-2 wins by many, many pages, this even though it only defines two terms! Really, who needs to have liquor explained? Answer: far fewer people than need sewer use and service explained.

The LR Code sets out the law of the Village, similar to, but distinctly different from, the law of the Jungle. Law in general has been described in many ways, including "invisible forces in the air", "something people get paid too much for", and "that shit that no one understands or likes". The LR Code contains the law that the people of Leaf River have determined will guide and regulate their tiny piece of the world. Delightful things are in the LR Code. Delightful things are in 3-2: Liquor Control.

In Section 6 (3-2-6): Restrictions on Issuance of License, the citizens of Leaf River define who among them may not obtain a liquor license. Such persons include

3-2-6D: A person who is not a citizen of the United States.
3-2-6F: A person who has been convicted of being the keeper of a house of ill fame.
3-2-6G: A person who has been convicted of pandering or other crime or misdemeanor opposed to decency and morality.
3-2-6P: Any elected public official, law enforcing officer, the Village President or member of the Village Board of Trustees, Leaf River officer or employee or member of any Leaf River board or commission.

The citizens thus exclude from obtaining a liquor license both keepers of houses of ill fame as well as elected officials, panderers as well as the Village President. 3-2-6P protects against conflicts of interest. Determining what 3-2-6D protects the village from will require more analysis.

If you should be so lucky as to avoid inclusion in the exclusions of 3-2-6 and you successfully obtain a liquor license, your first step will likely be hiring employees to sell your liquor. Your second step will be deciding what those employees will wear, naturally. To do so, turn first to LR Code 3-2-16: Attire:

3-2-16A: Every licensee and every employee...shall be properly and decently attired during the course of the sale [and] distribution...of alcoholic liquors of every description.... Topless or similar costumes are prohibited.

Shirts? Check. But, you're probably asking, what about pants?

3-2-16B: It shall be unlawful for any licensee or employee...to: 1. Expose his or her genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, natal cleft, perineum, anal region or pubic hair region.

"Dang!" you may say. "How will I sell copious amounts of booze to people if unable to attract them to my bar with pantsless employees?" But, an idea occurs: "What if I have my employees wear devices, costumes and coverings that make them appear to be pantsless?! Yes! Yes, this is the answer!"

3-2-16B: It shall be unlawful for any licensee or employee...to: 2. Expose any device, costume or covering which gives the appearance of or simulates the genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, natal cleft, perineum, anal region or pubic hair region.

"Damn you LR Code!"

You have found, as I did, that the LR Code is always, if not two, at least one step ahead of prurience.

"But," you may stammer, "but what if my employees wear shirts with no fronts? Yes! Again, yes, the answer!"

3-2-16B: It shall be unlawful for any licensee or employee...to: 3. Expose any portion of the female breast at or below the areola thereof.

"No! This can't be! How, how will I sell booze?!" Well, good person, may I make a suggestion? Seeing as 3-2-16B.3 applies specifically to "the female breast", perhaps a male gay bar would be profitable? If you are interested, I have a list of potential bar names that I might be willing to sell you. Let us only hope that 3-2-16A intends the same discrimination toward females as 3-2-16B.

Lest you begin to think that the LR Code only concerns itself with persons of ill fame, it should also be noted that the Code also contains moments of civility by prohibiting anyone from selling liquor "to any person known by them to be an habitual drunkard, insane, mentally ill, mentally deficient or in need of mental treatment" (3-2-18), as well as to minors (3-2-19).

Beyond the regulation of alcohol, the LR Code offers many morsels of insight into the social mores of the LR community and the values of LR citizens. Consider the legal definition of VEHICLE as outlined in 4-5-1:

A machine propelled by power other than human power designed to travel along the ground by use of wheels, treads, runners or slides and transport persons or property or pull machinery and shall include, without limitation, the following: automobile, truck, trailer, motorcycle, tractor, buggy and wagon.

Consider also the legal definitions from 5-2-1 for ANIMAL:

Any and all types of animals, domesticated and wild, male and female, except man,

for CAT:

Any cat, male or female,

and for DOG:

Any dog, male or female.

Lest you begin to think that the Village of Leaf River consists only of marginally-drunken pet owners prone to inebriated buggying, know also that Leaf River citizens care for all of nature, including both noble plants like trees and ignoble plants like weeds. Diseased trees harboring Dutch Elm Disease or the breeding activities of the Elm Bark Beetle are defined as nuisances and are to be removed and burned within ten days of identification for the protection of healthy trees (4-4-1A, B).

The citizenry also knows its weeds, so well that it delineates between Noxious Weeds and mere Other Weeds (4-3-1A, B). Noxious Weeds are: Ragweed, giant and common; Canada thistles and all of its varieties; perennial sow thistle; European bind weed; hoary cress, leafy spurge, Russian knapweed. Other Weeds: Burdock, cocklebur, jimson, blue vervain, common milk weed, wild carrot, poison ivy, wild mustard, rough pigweed, lambsquarter, wild lettuce, curied ock, smart weeds (all varieties), poison hemlock, wild hemp, ox eye daisy, goldenrod, yellow hemlock, buckhorn or other weeds of like kind.

Who know that Leaf River harbored such a plant-menagerie? (If these plants were to be displayed in the Village as a kind of menagerie, the proprietor would have to obtain a license for the "exhibition of inanimate objects" costing $5.00 per day under 3-3-2, control for crowding under 3-3-4A, guard against the show becoming indecent under 3-3-4B, and prevent rioting and any other public disturbance under 3-3-4C, all common occurrences at exhibitions of inanimate objects.)

The LR Code is a fun read if you are predisposed to legal fascination and ruminations on the ability to hold up to 5 pounds of dynamite in one's residence (4-6-2A). The LR Code and other municipal codes reveal to a certain extent how citizens and elected officials think about acceptable and unacceptable activities for humans. These laws regulate how we all live and establish the circumstances under which the state can exercise violence against its citizens through fines, seizure of property, and even imprisonment.

In this way, the municipal code outlines the activities that negate a citizen's quotidian protections against state violence that are outlined in other documents, like the United States Constitution. It is rather remarkable that such an important, consequential line is drawn in nearly incomprehensible legal language. However, the legal language is the way it is because it attempts to do something impossible for the written word: avoid ambiguity.

The law is a system for settling disputes and tries to establish the rules for all parties such that the actions of all people can be equally judged. However, all parties do not interpret language the same way. As an extreme example, consider someone with no knowledge of English. What meaning would they glean from the US Constitution? Words contain no meaning but are instead imparted meaning by their reader. Ambiguity is the unavoidable result of leaving the meaning of words up to every individual who reads them.

Nevertheless, the LR Code defines what is and is not permissible in the Village, but, if challenged, the meaning of the words would be interpreted by the legal system, by lawyers, judges, and juries charged with the responsibility—and power—to decide what words mean and impart consequences on people based on those decisions. This is the basis of one of my greatest fears: to be charged with and punished for something that I do not consider a crime. What I think about it really doesn't matter because deciding if something is a crime is not an individual decision, it is a social decision. (Dostoevsky's book Crime and Punishment—and much of his other writing—explores this fight between individuals and society (often religion) to define right and wrong.) Social decisions often get very messy because society's mores change faster than the individual values making up the society. It is a rare elderly person who thinks kids are doing the right things. And as we all know from the parental cliché, not knowing something is wrong does not excuse you from being punished. How else are you to learn that it is wrong?

Incidentally, this is the same principle underlying one of my major pet peeves. Dog owners in LR rarely if ever discipline their pets that jump on me while walking or charge toward me, murder in their eyes. The dog gets a yell from its owner, and the dog probably gets as much meaning form that yell as it would if it tried to read the LR Village Code. I, however, get serious negative reinforcement to ever step out of my house. Which is fine because it's winter.