Swearing Illegal?

In 2011, a High Court judge ruled that “people should not be punished for hurling obscenities in public because such words are now so common they no longer cause distress.” This makes the assumption that profanity is now mainstream and therefore is in no need of punishment, ethically speaking, is this decision the right one? 

Lets start with the divine command theory, this would state that unlike the judges decision, swearing should be punished, as god would not want profanity to make it into our everyday language. The only real way to stop such actions would be to punish them. This of course has the implication that the majority of the adult population of most nations would have to be punished as swearing has in fact made into everyday vocabulary. On the other hand, this would reduce the use of the obscene words in unnecessary situations such as basic descriptions of anything that moves.  

Utilitarianism in this situation has no real preference, as many would benefit from the lack of bad words in their everyday lives, allowing them to live less stressful lives. On the other hand, the introduction of punishment would ensure the punishment of many, either in the form of fines, or more extreme punishment, both of which are not desired and would almost certainly affect more people than if it were to be left alone. In both cases, we are relying on how we imagine the future to be after the implementation of the punishments or lack thereof. This allows for a lot of discrepancy as many would imagine the amount of swearing to go down after the implementation, whereas others would just imagine the current daily profanity users being punished, both of which give very different courses of action if the utilitarian theory is to be trusted. 

Deontology suggests that the punishment should be implemented into the system as if everyone were to swear, the world that we live in would not be as pleasant as it is now. That being said, the foresaw consequences of everyone being punished for their actions would lower overall morale in any nation and therefore would destroy many communities that thrive with the use of obscene language. Once again, this relies on our prediction of the future and how it will be if anything is done to counteract the swearing, a technique that gives different results to different people therefore making it very hard to create concrete knowledge. 

Both utilitarianism and Deontology relies on our prediction of the future, which differs from person to person and therefore is very hard to create concrete ethical knowledge from. This being said, it does offer insight into our basic human instinct of the situation as-well as the root of the reasoning of the judge declaring it not to be illegal to use profanity in public.