Kansas Residents Disapprove of ‘Sexting’ Statue

After a group of Chinese artists donated (probably, in retrospect, for a good laugh) a sculpture of a headless, jointless woman taking a picture of her exposed breasts called “Accept or Reject” to the Overland Park Arboretum in Kansas, residents in the area expressed all of the feelings. The statue was obscene! It promoted sexting! It’s all sliced apart at the joints, headless and therefore sort of a creepy thing to come upon in the woods! Now, after a long summer of fretting, it seems that the American Family Association has panhandled for enough signatures to get the statue removed.

The organization, which officially believes that the statue’s mere presence encourages sexting, says it has collected the signatures of 4,700 people who similarly didn’t care for the contemporary sculpture week in their undergraduate art history classes and want to see the decision to remove the statue put before a grand jury. Philip Crosby, a spokesman for the American Family Association, said that he couldn’t fathom “why a city would put a statue that’s celebrating sexting,” though I think we can all agree that Crosby has rushed headlong into the quicksand of an affective fallacy.

After the petition is turned in, if everything seems shipshape, Johnson County has 60 days to convene a grand jury. Or, you know, just leave it alone and have a great conversation starter for visitors to Overland Park.