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I
write this commentary because of the alarming tendency of people
thinking that telling others what to think and what to believe and
what to do is just and right so long as the intentions behind the
demands are "just and right".
There
is no right to be free from being offended. The
beauty of the American Experience is there is no value of
rubberstamping beliefs. Predicated on the
founding of this nation was that men are born with inalienable
rights - of life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of
happiness. There is no guarantee of
success. No guarantee of a life free from
obstacles. There is no guarantee of equality of
outcomes. And there is no guarantee that even
choosing the same path will produce the same result. Freedom
is something precious. Implicit in the Bill of Rights
are the concepts that so long as exercising these rights you do
not violate another's rights. Ownership of
a gun is not a problem but using it to kill someone outside of
self defense is violative of the concepts within the bill of
rights. While we have freedom of speech, yelling fire
in a crowded theater puts others at harm - imperils their pursuit
of life and is thus violative of the rights of others. What
has happened in this modern era is that there are factions on both
sides of the political aisle that seek to prevent certain rights
from being freely exercised because of the best of intentions, but
are no less repulsive on the good of the intentions. On
the right, we find that marriage has been institutionalized and
narrowly defined even as marriage is primarily a religious
institution - and a good idea - to lock down consenting adults in
a relationship that has obligations and responsibilities so that
whims of anger and passion don't result in a nullification of an
unbound relationship like those people who are just
dating. Somehow, governments have decided to
adopt this religious institution as a civil one and hook, line,
and sinker defining marriage just as religions have done. Now
that society sees that there are homosexuals who are not just
deciding one day to crave peen and to shun snatch, we are left
with an unfortunate situation. Since Government
has taken on religious institutions' trappings with marriage, gays
want their marriage and this creates a problem.
Most certainly homosexuals should have their relationships
recognized with the same rights and responsibilities, but
honestly, how is it that marriage should be redefined just to suit
this narrow viewpoint when there are other just as valuable
consenting adult relationships that should be bound by the same
responsibilities? What
should have happened is that marriage should have been removed
from all civil proceedings and a truly unique civil union should
have been created open to all adult coupling - not limited to
disparate genders and open to all numbers of interested parties -
bound and obligated by all laws and afforded all legal
protections. In
the arena of free speech, we have an alarming chilling experience
again predicated on the best of intentions.
Bigots and racists are virtual pondscum on the pond of the human
experience, but expressing one's ignorance is not violative of
anyone else's rights. While free speech may be
unpleasant at times, it is nonetheless no less worthy of protection
than other speech. Words written and uttered by
racists, while unfortunately ignorant, are just as worthy of being
protected as gays demanding their rights. If we
cherry pick which speech is most delicious and virtuous, we run
the risk of establishing precedent of acceptable speech that can
be used against the very people supporting those standards when
the winds of change happen on the political scene. Those
who advocate a narrowing of rights that suits the purposes of this
day seem to forget that governments change and parties out of
power come back to assume it and then are afforded new ways to
silence their enemies and to rightfully seek to redefine what is
now the standards of unacceptable speech. If we
agree to maintain the broadest interpretation of free speech
possible, we
don't have to worry about the precedent of limiting it to be used
against us in the future. By accepting that
some speech is just less precious than others, we establish the
expectation of another flavor of tyranny to be imposed on
us. Today's progressive attacks on rights could
and will likely shift to the self righteous gaining power and
seeking to silence their enemies. And the
progressives will have no one else to blame but themselves for
establishing the precedent where limitations of freedoms is okay
so long as you think you have good intentions enacting those
limitations. The Constitution does not say you can
limit speech that is less popular on contemporary
whims. Nor does the Constitution even establish the
expectation that some speech is less deserving of protection than
others!
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