Hanging of ‘Truck Nuts’ Grows into a Free Speech Debate

By Elizabeth Robichaux Brown, FOXNews.com

‘Don’t touch my junk,’ is taking on new meaning.

“Truck nuts,” fake bull testicles made of plastic or metal that drivers hang on the back of their pickups to make a truck look more manly, have been around for years. Some find them funny, while others find them offensive, prompting at least three states to try to ban them — unsuccessfully.

But a recent case in South Carolina is fueling debate over whether these ornaments violate a state’s indecency laws and if attempting to regulate them infringes on freedom of speech.

On July 5, Virginia Tice, 65, from Bonneau, S.C. pulled her pickup truck into a local gas station with red, fake testicles dangling from the trailer hitch. The town’s police chief, Franco Fuda, pulled up and asked her to remove the plastic testicles.

When she refused, he wrote her a $445 ticket saying that she violated South Carolina’s obscene bumper sticker law.

The South Carolina code of laws reads, “a sticker, decal, emblem, or device is indecent … in a patently offensive way, as determined by contemporary community standards, sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.”

To read more, visit:  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/02/hanging-truck-nuts-grows-into-free-speech-debate/

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