Aprotest — even one with sex toys — is as American as apple pie

Crossing the West Mall as a student at the University of Texas was always like moral calisthenics.

On any given day, you’d meet wide-eyed college students passing out pamphlets or spouting off about anything from non-vegan diets to Tibetan independence.

For a girl from Seguin, it could be both entertaining and terrifying.

Last week, at the start of fall classes, UT students got more than leaflets. They got sex toys. In all shapes and colors. Which they were instructed to sport on their backpacks.

If that sounds obscene, that’s the point. If it doesn’t, well, that’s the point, too.

One person’s rainbow-colored dildo is another person’s burkini.

The students were trying to juxtapose the obscenity of sex toys with that of a newly implemented law they oppose that lets concealed handgun owners carry on campus. See, in Texas, it’s potentially illegal to sport a dildo, but it’s perfectly legal to pack heat.

“It’s absurd,” Jessica Jin, a UT alum and founder of Cocks Not Glocks, told the New York Times. “So, I thought, we have to fight absurdity with absurdity.”

It was a clever way to demonstrate against gun culture in a state where many worship at the temple of the National Rifle Association. I fall somewhere in the middle on the issue.

I think campus carry will do more harm than good, with the potential to increase gun accidents and suicide deaths, but I don’t believe the alarmist predictions of those who say it will chill free speech in history class. I generally support gun owners’ rights, but I also believe in sensible gun reform — you know, things like universal background checks — which the powerful paranoia of the NRA won’t allow.

The phallic frenzy got me thinking, though, about obscenity, and our diverging definitions in America these days.

To me, a drug company charging $300 for a lifesaving EpiPen is far more profane than a single-payer health care model.

To me, a Byzantine, grossly underfunded public school system is more profane than allowing a transgender student to use the bathroom of his or her choice.

To me, the repression of people’s right to vote is more profane than the microscopic risk of voter fraud.

To me, the loose nukes from Donald Trump’s lips — taking aim at everyone from the disabled to a grieving Gold Star family — are more profane than Hillary Clinton’s coverher-ass rigidity.

Of course, many of you may disagree. And our differences can be disheartening.

While writing this column, I took a break to scan headlines and found solace in the one news story I thought would evoke feelings of applepie togetherness in every American: the centennial celebration of the U.S. National Park Service.

On Twitter, droves of people shared photos of adventures that transported me to the serenity of my own memories, among the redwoods in California, amid the mirrored canvass of Glacier, admiring the desert splendor of Big Bend.

Yes, I thought, here is something sacred. Our common places — precious, preserved, open to all, dearly loved.

Then I saw a tweet from former Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

“100 Years of The #NationalParkService Is Enough... Privatize The Monopolized Lands.” Well, hell. So, OK, maybe that’s what is sacred: the freedom to take an ideal and smash it under your shoe if you so choose.

That’s what we do in America. We share the road with people of different colors, beliefs, backgrounds and experiences.

Amile in any direction, and we risk running smack-dab into someone else’s moral code.

Some of us have the dents to prove it. Some of us cling to one lane on the few routes we know. But some of us like to walk through the West Mall when we can and take in the spectacle.