It is a shame that residents of the community of Grants Pen in St. Thomas could believe it was their right to inconvenience thousands of people on Sunday by blocking a critical route to protest against the arrest by the police of the dancehall DJ, Rodney Price, who calls himself Bounty Killer.

We would have been concerned by the behaviour of the people of Grants Pen at anytime but are outraged that the main thoroughfare to eastern Jamaica would have been deliberately cut off on a day when it was possible that Jamaica would have been hit by a hurricane. In that context, the behaviour of the residents was most crass and insensitive.

We expect, too, that there will be many who will argue that the actions of 'Bounty Killer' and his supporters were wilful and arrogant. We, in most respects, agree with that view and are often pained by the puerile and imbecilic actions of entertainers which appear to be calculated to ignite public disorder.

There comes a time, however, when a specific element of the law is a clear and unmitigated ass, having long outlived its social usefulness. The law covering indecent language is one whose asinine quality can be no longer in doubt.

Of course, this newspaper does not expound, promote or encourage uncouth or vulgar language. Neither can we understand why people, who pay good money to be entertained, would subject themselves to unedifying verbal assaults from Bounty Killer or whomever. But then again, neither can we legislate good sense. Nor should we attempt to be policemen of taste except in the most extreme of circumstances, when there is absolute certainty and consensus that a specific behaviour assaults common decency and corrupts public morals.

We cannot agree that the use of Jamaican expletives, in the context of today's mores, falls within these categories. Neither do existing laws on the use of indecent language fall within emerging international standards of freedom of expression. There is potentially a very thin line between restricting words and other forms of freedoms.

The point we make is that we have to be careful about how we contain free speech and the judgements we make about what is or is not decent, which, often, is coloured by our own social biases. Indeed, much of the language whose use in the dancehalls we complain about and for which we invoke the law, are the normal currency of social intercourse, even in so-called polite society. In other words, the words that offend the guardians of decency are the norm across all strata of society.

In any event, we would prefer to have the DJs using 'cuss' words in the dancehall than have their performances degenerate into mayhem and bloodshed.

Rather than having policemen arresting 'entertainers' for using indecent language, instead of investigating serious crimes, we should perhaps rate the stage shows much the same way we do films. Then if people want to pay to be verbally assaulted, so be it.

For to paraphrase Larry Flint, the boss of Hustler magazine, if the vulgarians can be guaranteed free speech, imagine the freedom owed the decent.