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TechnographRuling plays into conservative hands
When the Right is right about politically correct censorship
By Brian Pierce
Posted: 4/26/07 Section: Opinion Columns
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Last Wednesday, students and others across the country participated in a daylong ceremony known as the Day of Silence. This day has been an annual nationwide tradition on college campuses, in high schools and elsewhere for 11 years. It is a day of memorial, celebration and protest in which members of the LGBT community and their allies remain silent all day as a symbol of solidarity with those across the country and around the world who are silenced as a result of their sexual orientation.
The following Thursday, students and others across the country participated in a daylong ceremony known as the Day of Truth. This day has been a yearly nationwide tradition on college campuses, in high schools and elsewhere for three years, organized as a response to Day of Silence. According to its official Web site, the Day of Truth was "established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective."
The Web site goes on to justify the existence of the Day of Truth by citing instances in which students who have opposed the "homosexual agenda" have been censored or punished for expressing their views. "It is important that students stand up for their First Amendment right to hear and speak the Truth about human sexuality in order to protect that freedom for future generations," it argues.
I'm tempted to suggest to students who participated in the Day of Truth that the best way to protect freedom for future generations is to exercise those freedoms responsibly, which in my view would not include preaching intolerance or creating a hostile environment for their gay classmates and then hiding behind the First Amendment.
But the fact of the matter is that the organizers of the Day of Truth are not wrong to cite with regret the unfortunate fact that at times students who have expressed views sympathetic to theirs have indeed been censored or punished.
The most recent case comes from Neuqua Valley High School, in which the school district refused to allow two students to wear Day of Truth T-shirts reading "Be happy, not gay." A federal court recently denied the students a preliminary injunction. Jonathan Scruggs, an attorney for the Christian civil rights organization Alliance Defense Fund, called the ruling "disappointing," saying that "when a message comes along that the school doesn't like, it censors it ... You can't suppress speech just because someone might find it offensive."
The following Thursday, students and others across the country participated in a daylong ceremony known as the Day of Truth. This day has been a yearly nationwide tradition on college campuses, in high schools and elsewhere for three years, organized as a response to Day of Silence. According to its official Web site, the Day of Truth was "established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective."
The Web site goes on to justify the existence of the Day of Truth by citing instances in which students who have opposed the "homosexual agenda" have been censored or punished for expressing their views. "It is important that students stand up for their First Amendment right to hear and speak the Truth about human sexuality in order to protect that freedom for future generations," it argues.
I'm tempted to suggest to students who participated in the Day of Truth that the best way to protect freedom for future generations is to exercise those freedoms responsibly, which in my view would not include preaching intolerance or creating a hostile environment for their gay classmates and then hiding behind the First Amendment.
But the fact of the matter is that the organizers of the Day of Truth are not wrong to cite with regret the unfortunate fact that at times students who have expressed views sympathetic to theirs have indeed been censored or punished.
The most recent case comes from Neuqua Valley High School, in which the school district refused to allow two students to wear Day of Truth T-shirts reading "Be happy, not gay." A federal court recently denied the students a preliminary injunction. Jonathan Scruggs, an attorney for the Christian civil rights organization Alliance Defense Fund, called the ruling "disappointing," saying that "when a message comes along that the school doesn't like, it censors it ... You can't suppress speech just because someone might find it offensive."
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Viewing Comments 1 - 8 of 9
Elizabeth
posted 4/26/07 @ 2:28 AM CST
Great article. I completely agree with everything in it. The people in this country seriously depress me sometimes. I'm guessing that if today's students protesting homosexuality had lived a hundred years ago, they would have been against women's suffrage and interracial marriage - they just blindly listen to whatever oppressive norms they're told. (Continued…)
lyn
posted 4/26/07 @ 9:51 AM CST
"The best way to respond to the students wearing T-shirts is to respond to their "Truth" with the actual truth: That homosexuality is a fact of nature and that any religious doctrine that condemns it as sinful deserves to be relegated to the tier of outdated religious beliefs occupied by slavery and the subjugation of women. (Continued…)
Lyn
posted 4/26/07 @ 10:05 AM CST
Oh, before someone jumps all over the fact that I equated the current PC behavior with McCarthyism and Hitler, I am not equating the ideas of these men with current PC crowd(current PC is liberal and they were conservative)but of the atmosphere of censorship that surrounded them from the beginning and aided in their rise to power
B Wright
posted 4/26/07 @ 12:10 PM CST
"..the best way to protect freedom for future generations is to exercise those freedoms responsibly, which in my view would not include preaching intolerance or creating a hostile environment for their gay classmates and then hiding behind the First Amendment. (Continued…)
Narc
posted 4/26/07 @ 12:45 PM CST
I can only think that, when a response to a column is twice as long as the column itself, maybe it's time to get a blog or something.
Dan
posted 4/26/07 @ 1:42 PM CST
Why, Narc? The comment, long or short, was in response to the column, and this is the best way for people who read this column to see it. If you don't like reading long comments, just scroll down. (Continued…)
Linda
posted 4/27/07 @ 12:11 AM CST
Brian, you know I have chastised you before for your over-the-top articles. That's not the case now. You have supported your own case well, with arguments, with a sense of nuance, with sobriety. (Continued…)
Jeanette
posted 4/27/07 @ 1:01 AM CST
Come on now, let's not be silly. Bashing gay people is not about "freedom of opinion". Neither is it some unassailable moral judgment, such as "murder is wrong," or "torturing little kittens is indefensible". (Continued…)
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