> I remember when I was a little kid growing up, it was a *terrible* thing to use cuss words. As a child, I thought only "bad people" swore. As I got older, I began to realize that even "good people" use cuss words sometimes. My parents taught us never to use profanity, and I can still remember how shocked and even scared I was the first (and only) time I heard my father use a swear word. Unfortunately, Hollywood and television have seemingly worked hard for years to desensitize us to it. Over the years they've gradually introduced more and more profanity...first in the movies and then on television. I hardly ever watch TV anymore, because I can't stand all the profanity and taking of God's name in vain that I'm subjected to whenever the tube is on. I don't even go to the movies anymore.
>
> I think the most important reason not to use profanity is that it angers God. Ephesians 4:29 says, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."
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> I think this Biblical principle makes very good practical sense! When someone talking to me uses profanity, whether it is a lot or only a little, it makes me want to end the conversation then and there. I just don't want to talk to people who talk like that. I don't think there are any good reasons to use profanity. If someone is angry with me, a rant laced with foul language isn't going to help resolve the situation. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, the best word to use is "ouch." Swearing like a sailor isn't going to make your thumb feel any better.

Wow, these are good responses to ShadowClerk's question. I've frequently wondered exactly the same thing -- why has profanity become so widespread and so little noticed? I find it annoying, as some have already said, but even more than that, it makes me feel that something (the speaker? the speaker's point? myself?) has been cheapened and sullied, and that makes me depressed. Even if profanity is used casually, without the intention of verbally abusing anyone, it brings me down.

((WARNING -- Sheer Speculation Ahead)): I think there's something intrinsic about profanity that distances the speaker from the object of his/her speech, indicating the absence of regard for what is being said. At times, that message may be intentional, a means of implying that "you shouldn't take what I'm saying right now too seriously, because I'm just making talk." But when profanity is interspersed habitually throughout a person's speech, then the effect (at least, as I perceive it) is that the person becomes distanced from *everything* he/she says.

This has at least two results:
1) it makes the person less vulnerable, since their words aren't closely connected with who they are, and
2) it diminishes the person's ability to edify me with what they say, since their speech has become impersonal (to me, at least).

Maybe I'm over-analyzing this issue, and maybe after thinking it over some more I'd describe the use of profanity differently. What I *do* know is that it depresses me, and it's hard for me to imagine spending time in a peer-group filled with people who swear habitually, and feeling comfortable as among good friends.

A couple of random blurts before I close:

* I still don't think vulgarity belongs in the professional sphere. I remember eating at a Rock-Ola Cafe with some friends once, when one of the waitstaff almost gave us a plate of appetizers that were supposed to go to another table. Catching his mistake in time, he jokingly said what he assumed our response must have been: "Hey, alright -- FREE s__t!" It was a joke, but I'm too old-fashioned to feel that it's okay for a waiter to swear in front of his customers.

* I'm also old-fashioned enough that it bothers me ever so slightly more to hear women use profanity than it does when I hear men do the same. Sorry for that double-standard, ladies; but it's hard to help.

* A quotation I heard a long time ago, the source of which is unknown to me: "Profanity is the attempt of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully."

Iss "decency kicks butt" achar