Anyway, I haven’t always been a faithful person, nor did I throw off all my pre-Christian habits when I came into the fold. One of those is cursing/swearing/profanity — all of which, in my view, are loaded words. To be sure, my wife Shelley tries to discourage me; generally speaking, I’m not coarse in casual conversation. Truth be told, most of it goes on inside my head, though occasionally it spills onto the page (or the post), and when it does I’m pretty defensive and unapologetic.

You see, I’m of the mindset — rare indeed in Christian circles — that using profanity isn’t necessarily sinful; in fact, at times I think it’s entirely appropriate. That’s not to say my F-bombs dropped at someone cutting me off in traffic are from a righteous place; they’re not and I shouldn’t. But sometimes a character in a book or a particularly strong point can be emphasized with a well-placed harsh word, and I for one think that’s the whole point.

I mention all this because the Supreme Court has decided that not only can the FCC fine broadcasters for programming that contains systematic use of “dirty words” — there used to be a list, though it seems to have dwindled somewhat — but that even one-off, spontaneous utterances of the words ____ and ____ will incur fines.

What words? you ask. Well, the Supreme Court wouldn’t even write them in its opinion, but I’ll give you a hint: One starts with a whisper and ends with IT, while the other starts with FUH and rhymes with truck. They call it the “Bono rule,” because the U2 singer likes to use the F-word as an adjective — not, mind you, any kind of verb describing a physical act.

Anyway, it’s a bad call. But don’t take it from me: This column in the New York Times makes the case much better that these two banned words have become something less than vulgar:

Writing for the majority last week, Justice Antonin Scalia stated that it was “entirely rational” for the F.C.C. to conclude, as it did, that one particular curse “invariably invokes a coarse sexual image.”

Does it? The evidence is mixed. Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and the author of a book on swearing, described the F.C.C.’s argument as “rubbish.” Although the word in question originally referred to a sexual act, Mr. Sheidlower argued, it has now taken on an independent “emotional” sense. The nonsexual use of the word can be seen in countless contemporary examples, as when Vice President Dick Cheney used it in 2004 to recommend that Senator Patrick Leahy do something that is, strictly speaking, anatomically impossible. …

In 1623, the English Parliament passed legislation to prohibit “profane swearing and cursing.” Under that law, people could be fined for uttering oaths like “upon my life” or “on my troth.” In the Victorian era, the word “bull” was considered too strong for mixed company; instead, one referred to “gentlemen cows.” Times change, notwithstanding the fervent wishes of prescriptivists to keep dirty words dirty. [bolds mine-R]