Participating in Free Speech
This past weekend I was fortunate to be able to participate in the Pride Parade in Omaha, NE. my hometown. I know June is Pride Month but Omaha hosts the College World Series in June in the area that is best for the Pride Parade; it is what it is.
This was my second Pride Parade in a row and like last year it was a joyous and uplifting experience. It is a genuine celebration of the wonderful diversity amongst God’s children, and a powerful expression of accepting people for who and what they are. It is also a concrete example of committing a wanton act of free speech. It is a reminder that the First Amendment to the US constitution does not grant these rights of free expression, it only recognizes and legally protects them. Obviously, from my perspective those rights come from God.
There is Always an Opposition
As in past years there are those who come out to protest against those marching in the Pride Parade. These are typically Fundamentalist “Christians” who want people to know that they think supporters of the LGBTQIA+ community are going to hell. They apparently hurl epithets and invective at the marchers. I say apparently because I did not see them either last year or this year. I am certain that this invisibility of these people to my eyes stems from the fact that I have never given much of a shit what anyone thinks of me-especially since it is none of them I will be standing in front of at the end of the Age.
The woman I was marching with told me that she had seen some of these haters and had also seen the Parasol Patrol. This is a group that is dedicated to shielding marchers from these haters- particularly children. They wave their rainbow colored parasols peacefully in front of the fundies and block the marchers from being exposed to the sight of these haters. Also, this year some enterprising folks got loud clapper noisemakers-so when these people began spewing their vitriol they would be drowned out by the noisemakers.
Free Speech for Me…
In response to being informed about the Parasol Patrol and the clappers I pointed out that those folks had their rights of free speech and so did we. The woman I was walking with countered that these haters did not really have the right to spew out this kind of rhetoric. That these words were harmful, hateful and she indicated, almost akin to violence. Free speech she claimed had limitations. I only said that there were not many limitations, and anyway the best limitation of the speech of haters was better speech. It being such a joyful event I left the conversation at that.
Absolutely Free Speech By God
I misspoke in my response to the claim of limitation on free speech…there are in fact none. Period. Full Stop. There are two main reasons for this. One principled, one practical. First, there is no sanction given the followers of Jesus to truncate anyone’s speech. Jesus faced much hateful vitriol in His earthly ministry and never responded with force or coercion. Make no mistake about it, if you claim that some speech is violence then you are claiming the right to use violence to silence that speech. This is a Gospel nonstarter given that God’s own Son hung from the Cross forgiving those who murdered Him. Jesus went to His earthly death living out His call to love even your enemies. How can we then turn around and claim to imitate Christ while truncating such a fundamental human right as self-expression.
A fundamental human right is this. It is as close to a universal agreement as we can find, even among those who do not believe in God. One proof of how universally agreed upon this is, is to consider how would you disagree with me without using your right of self-expression. To own your own life (even if we as Christians think of it as stewardship) is to be able to communicate what you think in a completely free way. Anything less is to be reduced in what it is that makes you fully human. This means that, yes, you have the right to spew forth hate, and shitty ideas. Words are not violence. Only violence is violence-physically harming, beating, or killing another. Words are hurtful to be sure, but that is not the same as violence. The hard truth here is that none of us has a human right not to be offended, or have our feelings hurt.
I would argue that this even extends to cases of libel and slander. Many libertarians, and limited government types will disagree here, but I think a consistent position must include these cases as well. For a full treatment of this line of argument see here.
So, in the final analysis we have the right to communicate any ideas we choose, regardless of how awful those ideas are. We, as followers of Jesus have no sanction from anywhere in Scripture to use violence to prevent the transmission of these ideas. We do, however, have the Gospel call to respond to this hate with love-in short, to respond with a better idea.
The Practical Case Against Censorship
The practical case is as ironclad as the moral case. If you think some ideas are so harmful that they need to be coercively censored then who gets to decide? In the case of the Pride Parade, the fundies will tell you that what some call hate is God’s hard truth about sexuality. There is simply no way to win a debate about which ideas deserve censorship without it devolving into a fight over control of the coercive apparatus.
The only entity that has enough coercive leverage to shut down ideas is the government. It then quickly becomes a case of who has control of the government. The progressive left should have been disabused of the idea of that they would forever control the government when Trump won in 2016, then won again in 2024. Never create a power that you do not wish to see in the hands of your political opponents.
To claim the right of censorship is to set humanity on a course of a never-ending cycle of violence and retribution. It will end up as a Hobbesian war of all against all. Humanity has been here before, many times. The lack of toleration is a negation of civilization. I outlined this in a piece 3 years ago. We will exhaust our wealth and our ability to attain real progress if we start thinking that we have the right and the ability to effectively censor ideas we find repugnant.
Additionally, to force some ideas underground simply because you have the political power to do so will only aggravate the sense of oppression of the intellectually disfavored and exacerbate their sense of persecution. Also, if we push some ideas underground we will not know what sort of mayhem these people might be up to.
Yes, we have the right to defend ourselves against violent actions-which is to say, real violence. We will hurtle society closer to open violence with each more aggressive attempt to truncate rights of free expression. Shut off people’s nonviolent expression and they will quickly begin to realize that they have little to lose by committing real violence.
The Light of Faith and Reason
Bring these haters and their awful ideas into the full light of day and defeat them with the power of the Good News of an all-loving, all-forgiving God. Light is truly the best antiseptic.
The only deal that can be made here is to accept that others have the right to free expression in return for your own right of free expression. All rights must be universal, not tribal or situational. This is not simply a practical consideration; it is a moral one as well. It also has the benefit of being consistent with the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Now that is an idea worth holding a parade for!
Praise Be to God
