Sunday, April 23, 2006
Free speech as a tenet of our civil religion
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- For those who have too little
- Time to gather mountain views
- Our blind spot on roads
- Following the money trail
From the RoundTable blog
I love these guys at Radford University. Twice in recent months, administrators and students have faced controversies over expressions of religious belief. Both times, they've come through with flying colors of red, white and blue: That First Amendment thing? They get it.
People have a right to their opinions and -- here's the hard part -- to express them publicly, even if others find them repugnant.
I wonder, though, if the university and other Virginia institutions will be facing tougher tests of that principle in the near future, when freedom of speech collides more sharply with freedom of religion, and mere reason and tolerance will not be enough to settle conflicts.
They seem sufficient now -- at least they do at Radford, where students rallied last week for diversity on campus after a March 29 column in the campus newspaper denounced homosexuality as a "proud, sinful lifestyle." Rather than fight columnist Brian Erskine's right to say what he thinks, people who find his view repugnant countered by making their own views known and seeking support for them.
Student organizations also held an open forum on diversity issues soon after the column appeared, and a gay alliance group offered red ribbons to students, faculty and staff to wear as a symbol of welcome to students of all kinds, including sexual minorities.
Good for them. The way to fight ideas is with other ideas, in a free marketplace of words where people get to hear it all and decide for themselves what they'll buy.
The stir caused by the anti-homosexuality column was a sort of mirror image of a campus conflict earlier this year, when the university's Internet magazine offended many people, Christian and otherwise, with the satirical cartoon series "Christ on Campus." Some critics saw it as blasphemous and thought the university should not permit it in a student publication, but Erskine was not among them. He said at the time he'd "fight tooth and nail" for the cartoonist's right to publish his work.
University officials resisted the temptation to defuse the controversy through censorship. Now Erskine benefits from that wisdom.
Still, last week's controversy contains a thread from a larger, conservative Christian campaign to challenge aspects of tolerance programs common at schools, universities and workplaces around the nation. (Virginia is ahead of the game. Its character education curriculum for K-12 public schools already excludes tolerance as a virtue.)
Specifically, the aspects of diversity programs that are under assault have to do with protecting gays and lesbians from harassment.
So, a conservative Christian and a Jewish co-plaintiff have filed suit against Georgia Tech, demanding that it revoke its tolerance policy because it bans speech that insults others based on their sexual orientation. Protecting the feelings of gay students runs headlong into the rights of other students both to hold whatever religious beliefs they want and to express them freely.
And I'd concede the point, if that were the full extent of the challenge to diversity programs. But it's not.
In an April 10 news story on the lawsuit by Ruth Malhotra and Orit Sklar, the Los Angeles Times reports that "the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms -- backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ -- already take on such cases for free." The Alliance Defense Fund filed suit on behalf of Malhotra and Sklar.
The aim of these organizations, the newspaper reports, is not just to rid campuses of speech codes but "to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment," including anti-discrimination policies.
I have little patience for the view that people have a constitutional guarantee against having their feelings hurt. No such legal right exists -- for anyone.
Radford seems to have avoided stepping into that philosophical trap.
But neither do people's private prejudices or public statements of beliefs give them the right to interfere actively in the peaceable lives of others.
A legal standard for discriminating against people who aren't hurting anyone, but who offend others solely by virtue of who they are, would cross that line.
Malhotra told the Los Angeles newspaper that college deans have reprimanded her several times merely for expressing her conservative religious and political views.
A Georgia Tech spokeswoman told the newspaper the university encouraged open debate among students, "as long as they're not promoting violence or harassing anyone."
Ah, but what's open debate and what's harassment?
Christian conservatives are making a federal case out of the question. Let's hope the courts will continue to recognize that nobody has to approve of anybody else, but in the eyes of the law, all people are created equal.
