The Man is stomping on our right to freedom of expression. Get mad now, or sit there gaping with your mouth open later.

Across the nation – including several communities in Louisiana – city councils have decided that sagging endangers the public good. Sagging, as in, “persons with pants which fall below the buttocks exposing their undergarments,” to quote one proposed law in a Connecticut town.

To clarify: These are sagging pants, not sagging body parts. If, in fact, you wanted to walk around without these supposed undergarments, you’re still perfectly within the law.

Proponents of these laws claim that they protect upstanding citizens or whatever from the menace of exposed boxers (and perhaps, even worse, exposed thongs – skin! The horror!). Such measures also put an end to a perceived hip-hop/gangster culture, which clearly will fix all the statistical ailments that black youth face today.

This isn’t some unfortunate joke – an Atlanta city councilman wants to get this outlawed in the largest metropolitan area to date. Even worse, the town of Delcambre, La., made sagging illegal in June and punishes it with a $500 fine and six months in jail.

Whew. Talk about a bad place to lose a bunch of weight.

When Mary Beth Tinker, her brother and several others got suspended from school for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, they paved the way for generations of young people to express themselves through means other than speech and the written word. This sagging concept isn’t wholly different. Sure, the Tinker conquest was more noble than kids – and adults – whose pants hang low, but the principle is the same – You have the right to choose how you express who you are. There’s no reason to give that up.

Still, the courts have eroded the Tinker decision’s scope through the years. First, there was Hazelwood, which gave secondary school officials the A-OK to request copies of student journalists’ work prior to publication, a complete slap in the face to the whole freedom of the press shebang in the First Amendment.

Then this past summer came “Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” a banner unfurled by an Alaskan high school student – who was off school property at the time – that was ripped down by his school principal. The student sued, won, and had his case hold up until the Supreme Court sided 5-4 with the principal in July.

The court said she had an interest in suppressing a “sophomoric” message that “promoted illegal drug use.” The court might as well have said anytime an administrator gets peeved, he or she can exact revenge on the offending student.

This anti-sagging legislation is an attack on the principle of Tinker, just in a different way. It doesn’t just apply to students, at schools, who supposedly have fewer rights than college students and other normal adults. It stems from indecency and obscenity laws that protect people from the horrors of, well, people different from themselves.

There are things that are obscene. The way people wear their clothes doesn’t qualify.

There are also things that are indecent. Definitions will vary.

People have the right to get offended, but they don’t necessarily have the right to stop people from offending them. The world would be a nicer place if we jailed everyone who didn’t shower or fined everyone with a mullet, but it’s not gonna happen. Walking around with a hose and a pair of gardening shears isn’t going to make things better, either.

It’s misguided to think that whittling away at the First Amendment and the Tinker decision will get us anything more than a beautifully carved toothpick. It’s easy to let our rights fall by the wayside when it’s not that big a deal, but when it comes time to fight for something we care about, we’ll unsheath the hewn remnants of our rights.

– Josh Hillman is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Cedar Rapids. He is the Daily opinion editor.