Freedom of Speech is Precious—But Some Isn't
Free speech, at times, has nothing to do with freedom
 

July 16 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ
 

Organizations within the Christian Right often invoke their right to “free speech” when vomiting their vile bile. Like all hate groups, they do indeed have a right to free speech. But let’s have some consistency here…

Consider this expression of “free speech”:

Anti-gay protesters have been gathering for the past three weekends at the corner of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue in Midtown Atlanta in front of the popular gay bookstore, Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse, holding up signs and shouting messages from a bullhorn, according to store owner Philip Rafshoon. …

 

The group typically consists of 15 to 20 street preachers, Rafshoon said. They all hold up signs that say, among other things, “Homosexuality is sick, wicked and an abomination before God”…

Why aren’t these street preachers evangelizing in front of civil courts that grant divorces based on “irreconcilable difference”? Or marching en masse at Las Vegas “quickie divorce” centers?

Why aren’t they picketing all restaurants that serve shrimp, lobster, clams, or other shellfish?

Why aren’t they protesting in front of all manufacturers that make and all retailers that sell clothing made of two different threads?

Why aren’t they demonstrating in front of the houses of all home gardeners who grow two different crops in their vegetable garden?

All of these acts – and many, many other common modern realities – are also forbidden in the Bible where they’re deemed “abomination[s] before God.”

And why, in “God’s name” are they not picketing Catholic churches that are filled with venerated statues and other “graven images” (not to mention infested with pedophile scandals)?

Biblical babble is the Christian Right’s forte. It’s epitomized by Jerry Falwell’s edict that “The Bible is the inerrant...word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to … geography, science, history, etc” [italics added]. 

Therefore, all post-biblical human knowledge about “geography, science, history, etc” is suspect, if not demonic. So why does Falwell go to a doctor when he’s ill, and why aren’t those street preachers and other self-appointed spokesmen for “God” picketing the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences, National Geographic, and the American Historical Association?

Because it further negates their discrimination-based “biblical worldview,” the science of human genetics – which has again suggested homosexuality is genetic (determined before birth) and not simply “a lifestyle choice” – is the Christian Right’s special target. Genetic mutations and evolution are not theories. They’re facts the validity of which cannot be disputed scientifically. (Ask any bacterium or virus, or read the medical literature on pathogens evolving to become resistant to traditional drugs used against them.)

Tom Flannery writes a weekly political column called “The Good Fight” and a regular religious column, “Why Believe the Bible?” In a July 1, 2006 doom-and-gloom article titled “Darwinism’s Bitter Fruits,” Mr. Flannery blamed science, evolution, and Darwinism for basically all of society’s ills:

Evolution is not only junk science, it is a pernicious social doctrine which produces a bitter harvest in the hearts and minds of its adherents. When children are taught this theory as fact (as most are today), it affects their entire belief system and outlook on life. The implications are devastating for individuals as well as for society at large. …

 

Yet in a generation raised to accept evolution as fact, there is no room for truth nor any basis for absolute virtues or values. Truth cannot possibly exist in a world that came about as a result of chance explosions and chemical reactions, where everyone and everything arrived on the scene accidentally. [italics added]

“Junk science”? No doubt Mr. Flannery would deem the myths of Genesis and/or the hocus-pocus of “intelligent design” to be “real science.”

“Pernicious social doctrine.” Flannery’s reference was to what’s called “Social Darwinism,” an idea initially expressed in the writings of English philosophers Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. The idea became popular in the late nineteenth century, but met its doom when Hitler used it to argue for the inherent superiority of his Christian “master race.”

Not surprisingly, the zealots of the Christian Right are themselves inveterate Social Darwinists who claim Christianity – and only Christianity – is the way to “salvation” and that homosexuals do not deserve civil equality or equal rights because they are “defective” and not “fit” (biblically speaking) to “survive.”

Politically, leaders and members of the Christian Right are overwhelmingly Republican and ultra-pro-capitalism, an ideology which is predicated upon Social Darwinism: only the “fittest” businesses and industries should survive.

Unless, of course, the company is called Enron. At the funeral of Ken Lay,

Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared.

 

“He was taken out of the world right at the right time,” he said. “History has a way of vindicating people who have been wronged.”

Apparently that’s Jerry Falwell’s Bible-based view of history in which people like Lay who devastated and destroyed thousands of hard-working peoples’ lives are “saved” by “absolute virtues and values.”

When Flannery wrote “no room for truth nor any basis for absolute virtues or values,” he was invoking the “inerrant truths” of the Bible according to Jerry Falwell: “The Bible is the inerrant...word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc” [italics added].

The “truth” of the existence of Antarctica and the double-helix of DNA were unknown to biblical people. Nor were they aware of the long history of dinosaurs, the last of which went extinct 64,000,000+ years before the Bible was “compiled.” Does that mean these facts are not “Truths”?

As for “absolute virtues or values,” in philosophical terms that idea falls under the heading “deontological theories.” History and reality have shown them to be impractical, counterproductive and, in the “wrong hands,” dangerous. Even Christian and conservative writer Dennis Prager acknowledged that in a May 2002 article that was auspiciously republished by World Net Daily on July 4, 2006. The article was titled “Thank God for moral violence.” On July 12, 2006, Chad Groening’s Agape Press article bore an “interesting” title: “Evangelicals Wrong to Endorse Anti-Torture Statement, Says Activist.”

As the reality and history of human existence – and the expanding universe itself – have so clearly demonstrated, “change” is the only eternal. But change is something that terrifies ultra-conservatives and the Christian Right. That’s why they so fear the revelations of genetic sciences in relation to homosexuality.

A July 2, 2006 Los Angles Times editorial titled “So what if they’re born gay?” made the point. It ended with this Truth:

Even if a laboratory found incontrovertible proof that sexual preference is solely biological – for that matter, if a flag of divine truth saying the same thing fluttered down from the heavens tomorrow – it would not change the minds of religious conservatives who deplore homosexuality and seek to limit gay rights. Many of them have moved beyond the question – or rather, veered around it.

 

Homosexuality might well be innate, they argue, but many other behaviors are equally natural – such as the desire of adolescents to have sex before marriage or the urge of spouses to stray from fidelity. The origin of the desire is unimportant to them; it’s still immoral behavior in their book, so the desire must remain unfulfilled.

 

We disagree with the notion that some people should dictate how others choose to live their lives. But religious conservatives are right, in a sense, to say that the reasons some people are gay should have no bearing on their rights. Whether someone is born gay or somehow chooses to be gay, gay rights stem from a consenting adult’s inherent freedom to live as he or she sees fit, without harming others. [italics and link added]

Freedom of Speech is indeed precious, but some speech and the actions it incites have nothing to do with freedom, equality, reality, or any religious or secular values:

'Bounty' For Killing Gays At World Pride

365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

July 11, 2006 - 11:00 am ET

 

(Jerusalem) Hundreds of leaflets distributed to homes in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox area and other parts of the city overnight offer 20,000 Israeli new shekels or about $4,500 US to anyone who kills gays marching in next month’s World Pride in Jerusalem.

 

The flyers bore the name Red Arm for Salvation and said the money would go to “anyone who will cause the death of one of the Sodom and Gomorrah people.”

 

“During this parade, 300,000 corrupt animals are anticipated to march through the holy city of Jerusalem, waiting avidly for the chance to put themselves on display before our children and our sacred Torah. They will try as hard as they can to defile as many of our innocent children as they can,” the leaflets said.

 

The flyers also gave detailed instructions on how to make a Molotov cocktail, an incendiary bomb using a bottle, to be lobbed into the parade. ...

Not surprisingly, the “Red Arm for Salvation” denied it had anything to do with the leaflets, but as was correctly noted, “regardless of who sent out the leaflets, what is far more troublesome is who might pick them up and take the message to heart. It really only takes one crazy soul to hurt a lot of people.”

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