The Best Banned in the Land

The big story this week has been the Trump White House's retraction of press credentials to reporters from MS NOW, CNN, and Politico.  A judge issued a temporary restraining order last night, and the crews have been reinstated for now, but as one observer remarked hopefully on MS NOW today, it isn't over yet.  The order will expire in two weeks, Trump can kick out the reporters again, and the cycle will continue.

I really intended to write about this last week, but things have been hectic around here.  My first reaction to the news was to remember the independent journalist I. F. Stone's quip that being kicked out of the White House press corps during the Truman administration was the best thing that ever happened to him. He continued to work as an investigative journalist, started his own newsletter long before the Internet, blogs, and Substack, and broke numerous important stories simply by doing research.  He also said that having access to government officials was hazardous at best to journalistic integrity: you hang around with these guys, you get friendly with them, and eventually you begin to understand why it's in the interest of the public to be lied to. 

In Trump's case, he has (as some of his defenders pointed out) been much more accessible to the press than Biden or Obama.  He spars with reporters face-to-face constantly, though that produces nothing but soundbytes as far as I can see, sometimes a shocking! shocking! insult directed at a (usually female) reporter, but he has the power and can dance around, play, and simply lie at his pleasure.

Trump is certainly in the wrong.  It was funny when he slipped and declared, "I don't have to let them into my — into the people's house," but it didn't change anything.  The invocation of "national security" is transparently bogus, but the courts have generally declined to push back on that sacred value, no matter how unjustified it is, since the Nixon administration at least. 

NPR admitted: "As Trump noted, there is no constitutional or legal right that requires the president to let any particular journalist — or anyone at all — to report on federal matters from the White House grounds. The administration has argued in public statements that reporting from White House grounds is a privilege not a right."  But that works both ways: US presidents have come to take for granted that, like Jesus in the gospel of Mark, they can simply summon the multitude at whim, and a crowd will magically appear to drink up their words. Presidential access to the press is also a privilege not a right.  A clutch of news organizations - even Fox News! - banded together to withhold their microphones from Trump, with entertaining results.  The same networks ran the same video clip of Trump at a ribbon-cutting ceremony with no microphones to catch his babble, and the anchors giggled nervously at how much he must be suffering.  But the suffering was obviously mutual.  Trump still found some microphones elsewhere to speak to, and the networks ran the video.

I'm old enough to remember when the news media were wailing that Obama's disinclination to hold press conferences often enough threatened the First Amendment.  That was a nothingburger too.  I think it was on NPR earlier this week, but can't find it now, that some champion of the press fumed that journalists are professionals! who've studied for years! ... This can't be taken seriously.  Reporting is something you can learn on the job; journalism school isn't necessary.  And I don't see much payoff from those years of studies in the Washington press corps, especially those who fence with the Presidents or their proxies in front of cameras.  (Some of them do good work -- but in print, not on TV or radio. I think I've mentioned before that I listen to my NPR affiliate for its very good local news coverage, and secondarily to the national reporters only to infuriate myself out of bed in the morning.)  

The press secretaries, regardless of their party, are professional liars, and they give away very little, often nothing. There's little to choose between, say, Karine Jean-Pierre rolling her eyes like a bored teenager and Carolyn Leavitt singing the praises of her Supreme Leader; not to mention the other press handlers like Matt Miller, who couldn't help smirking as he defended killing Gazan children. At best, press secretaries are butts for comedy.  (Remember Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders?)  And I don't think that's enough to justify the time and expense of press interaction with them.

Excuse Me, What Planet Are We On?

I've seen this post from the ACLU on Facebook a couple of times recently.  Today I looked at it more closely, and it really pissed me off.

Of course little Logan should have been allowed to grow his hair long.  It has nothing to do with "tribal culture."  Boys who aren't part of that culture should also be allowed to grow their hair long - or not, as they wish. I thought that little matter had been more less settled after the Sixties; evidently not.  

According to the Facebook version of the post, "after Logan and his family pushed back, the school updated its rules to allow for long hair on boys. Native students have the right to honor their heritage in their expression."  Again, all students have that right: MAGA students, white Christian students, students wearing Confederate emblems. And how about child betrothal? That's a heritage that's at least a thousand years old. (As a wise person wrote sarcastically long ago: "I'm a white heterosexual male; oppression and exploitation are part of my culture." We shouldn't hate people for who they are!) The ACLU has had to intervene in schools that tried to block such expressions.

A few months ago Hemant Mehta, aka the Friendly Atheist, posted a video about a high school that gives seniors reserved parking spaces that the students are allowed to decorate, though they have to clear their designs with the administration. A Christian girl submitted a very tame Christian design, which the administration vetoed; she submitted another, tamer design, and in the end the school reluctantly allowed it.  This was the right thing to do, as Mehta says in the video.  But some of his commenters disagreed, some vehemently.  One wrote that it "risk[ed] causing a religious war on the school ground". Another wrote "I don't know tho, 'no religious symbols' feels like a fair rule. Yes, it should have been included in the guidlines, but it's not a crazy ask".  Another: "I went to a Catholic high school in the 1980s and there's no way on Earth ANY of us would've chosen some sort of religious theme to decorate a personalized parking space. America has lost its marbles."  (Religious - that is, private - schools have more leeway to suppress freedom of expression than public schools. It seems odd to me that religious imagery would have been disallowed at a Catholic school - were students allowed to wear scapulars?)

This person went further:

I'm gonna dissent here. If I was a student with religious trauma (I got some trauma, but not a student now), and I saw a 'God is Love' parking space on my way in every day, I would feel like my struggle had been minimized. I would feel attacked. When I was in high school I had to push back a few times against Christian encroachment into the neutral learning space. It ***sucked***, because their response is never 'we understand your problem' but instead 'why don't you like love?'

I wrote a reply:

Gee, that's too bad.  I understand your problem, but it is not the business of the state or public institutions to spare you discomfort - indeed, the Bill of Rights effectively guarantees your right to be uncomfortable.  You are not entitled to silence others because of your trauma.  I would say the same thing to a conservative Christian who 'feels attacked' by competing religions or no religions at all - and you do know they use that rhetoric.

I speak, by the way, as a lifelong atheist and gay man who grew up in the rural midwest in harsher times. I've encountered plenty of Christian and other encroachment in my time; I do not demand that the state protect me from it.  That way lies the same kind of authoritarianism I'm rejecting here, and I speak from decades of experience in a public Big Ten university.  The culture of therapy is nominally secular, but it's as much of a threat to freedom as any religion. 

I've written about this before (and before that).  An alarming number of people find it very threatening that other people are allowed not only to hold beliefs but to try to persuade others to hold them.  They cloak this in therapeutic language or other covers, in the name of liberalism and inclusiveness, but they are authoritarians and censors at heart.  I may sympathize with their discomfort, but not with their wish to silence everyone else.  I fully support helping kids (and adults) learn to defend themselves against religious and other encroachment, though of course most of it will come from their own parents.  But I'm in a minority: the Culture of Therapy wants compassionate professionals to "protect" us from the bad guys, because we are too fragile to deal with hostility, criticism, or any difference of opinion at all. 

Worse, Mehta in the video defends a hypothetical atheist decoration on the grounds that it wouldn't be "offensive," and supports school censorship of students' speech that is "offensive."  Who gets to decide what is offensive?  (If offense were a criterion, he'd have to reject statues of Baphomet in public spaces - but he thinks they're cool. They aren't, but they are protected by the First Amendment.)  And many people would be offended by atheist decorations; Mehta can hardly be unaware of that.  

If you want a society with freedom of religion and speech, you'd better get used to being offended.  The First Amendment guarantees your right to be offended.  High school is the latest that students of all opinions should start learning that basic truth, and how to deal with it; such education should start sooner.  My objection as an atheist to officially sanctioned prayers in public schools is not that they're offensive - I'm not offended by them - but that they are encroachments against the establishment clause of the First Amendment.  Life in a free society is not always comfortable.  

Back to Logan Lomboy.  To repeat, I support his right to wear his hair long, not because it's a thousand-year-old tribal heritage but because all people should have the right to determine their appearance as much as possible.  I can't help but wonder, though, what will happen if he decides he doesn't want to wear it long a few years down the road?  Will his mother celebrate his decision?  Traditional societies aren't generally big on individual choice.  After all, he's awfully young, too young to make important decisions like that. His little brain hasn't matured enough ... I'm being sarcastic, mind you: I don't consider it an important decision.  What is important, and needs to be protected because it's always under threat, is people's freedom to choose to be different.

Caress, Fondle, Nuzzle the Hair of Your Feelings

The American Civil Liberties Union is supporting four atheist students in Smith County, Tennessee who are resisting the imposition of Christian belief and practice by teachers in their high school: "school officials promoting Christianity through official prayers, Bible distributions, religious posters, and even a giant cross painted in one of the school’s athletic facilities." Three of the students were interviewed for the ACLU blog, and right off the bat they made it clear that their own understanding of the issue at stake was deficient.

What has your school environment been like for you?

Harleigh: Overall, it’s really uncomfortable. You feel like you don’t fit in at all.

Leyna: To be honest, it’s kind of awkward having to deal with everybody making it seem like you have to believe in one thing, just like them.

Pyper: Mostly it’s just uncomfortable and feeling like you don’t fit in.

I hope that their ACLU team has explained to them that their feelings are not the issue, and won't be helped if they win their lawsuit.  (It's likely, in fact, that their school environment will become even more uncomfortable in retaliation for making trouble and hating on Jesus.  Conservative Christians are very loving toward people who interfere with their theocratic aspirations.)  But maybe the ACLU doesn't know either, since they previously defended a student's suit to block official prayer at their high school commencement because "'They just wanted to be able to attend their commencement without feeling like an outcast,' ACLU NC legal advisor Chris Brook said."  Most of the comments under the ACLU's Facebook post were dispiriting in their historical and political ignorance, subliteracy, and mindless sloganeering.

I've complained about this kind of misunderstanding before, but as Christian Slater said in Heathers, I'll repeat myself.  The First Amendment doesn't guarantee that your sensibilities won't be offended, either by stray dissidents or by the majority of society.  It doesn't guarantee your god-given right to feel like you fit in.  Very much the opposite.  Nor is there any reason why it should, and I think that's most important.  If you adopt and express an unusual, let alone unpopular opinion, you're likely to find yourself on the outs with numerous groups in your vicinity: your school, your church, your family.  This probably won't be pleasant, but it goes with the territory.  It's not a secret: there are many role models, historical and fictional, religious and secular, for individuals who defied the crowd.

And with the best will in the world, the crowd isn't necessarily going to be able to reassure you much.  If everybody else in town is going to church and you refuse to, you're going to be left out, an outsider, a weirdo.  Even if the majority are nice about it, which may happen, you're going to be marginalized, because you marginalized yourself.  (They're certainly not obligated to stay home from church so you won't feel like an outcast.)  All the First Amendment does is protect you against official, government penalties for being a weirdo.  That may not seem like much, but it took many centuries for civilization to get to reach that point.

Worse yet, one of the kids complained "I respect other people’s religion, and I would like it if everyone else would respect my beliefs."  Does she, now?  She "respects" beliefs that, by definition, she regards as false and unfounded?  I think that, like many people, she doesn't know what "respect" means.  We are obligated to respect other people's right to hold their beliefs, but not to respect the beliefs themselves, nor are we entitled to demand that others respect our beliefs.  And if, in a small-town Christian-dominated high school full of adolescents, the worst she has to complain about is a lack of respect, she's pretty lucky. 

"Belonging" seems a rather iffy notion anyhow.  Isn't it subjective?  People often feel that they don't belong even when there's no evident exclusion going on.  Think, for example, of all the gay people who claim that they always knew they were "different," even before anyone else around them knew.  Perhaps they were right that if others knew their secret, they'd be ostracized, but not always.  In my adolescence I myself felt more alienated than was warranted.  When I graduated and started hanging out at a regional campus in a nearby city, I found a group of people among whom I felt as if I belonged for the first time in my life: the university club that ran a small coffeehouse near campus.  I was still a weirdo, but it didn't seem to matter.

When I moved to the flagship campus two years later and came out, I found that I didn't feel I belonged in the gay community there.  Partly this was encouraged by some of the gay people I met, but I also found I didn't care, because I wasn't going to let other people define and regulate gayness for me.  But all of this took place apart from First Amendment issues, because belonging is not a function of the state.

Something similar occurred to me as a writer.  I took a couple of writing classes, first at the regional campus and then at the main one.  I "belonged" there because I'd signed up for the classes.  At the main campus, I tried to get my poems published but without success, though I don't think that's why my writing dried up.  Several years later, I began writing poetry again, and made some inroads in whatever poetic community could be said to exist around the campus and town.  But I didn't fit in, and the exclusion was mutual: other poets didn't seem to know what to do with me, nor did I.  I realized that I wasn't interested in being one of the gang, at least not theirs. This again wasn't anything that the ACLU could have helped me with.  But it wasn't traumatic for me.  I had friends and community of my own anyhow, including a couple of doctoral students in English who praised and encouraged my work.

Later, as I learned and thought more about these matters, I found that atheists were as varied a bunch as gay people, and that I'm not sure I belong among atheists -- except that we aren't, for the most part, organized and there's no one to force an atheist orthodoxy on me. Which doesn't mean I haven't encountered atheists who would like to excommunicate me, but at worst I find it puzzling.  I also wonder if I ever really expected that there was a warm, welcoming atheist community where everyone agreed about everything; I may have, on some unconscious level, but not seriously.  Some atheists are dogmatic, but they have no power over me as atheists, and I don't need their respect.

If these high school atheists in Tennessee expect to find an environment where their beliefs are respected, they are going to be sorely disappointed.  Being a dissident in any domain is not likely to be comfortable, and the First Amendment will only take you so far.  The rest you have to negotiate for yourself.

Amusingly, the religious-right pundit Rod Dreher has been complaining again about the lack of respect "traditional Christians" get in America, and I'll try to write about that next.  The general situation is not unlike what these kids in Tennessee are facing, except that I have even less sympathy for the likes of Dreher.

I Don't Care What Yahweh Don't Allow

According to this article, the resident artiste of the Masterpiece Cakeshop is suing his state government, alleging harassment and persecution for his deeply held religious beliefs.  This is due to another suit accusing him of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake for a transgender person's transition. There aren't enough details in the article for me to discuss that case; anyhow, what I'm interested in now are the remarks of the person, Brent Sirota, who linked to the article in a tweet.  He's an academic, a "Historian of sacred and profane things" according to his profile, with a focus on "Disenchantment operations, mostly."  I follow him because he often shares useful information, including recommendations of several books that I have found very useful.  But his complaints today made little sense to me.

First:

I simply don't see the bottom to this. Any number of prejudices can be and have been swathed in theological garb--many quite recently, historically speaking: against interracial marriage and integration, antisemitism, anticommunism.

This is true as far as it goes.  What's missing is an acknowledgment that it's not only "prejudices" that have been "swathed in theological garb."  His use of "prejudices" is tendentious and disingenuous.  Just about any position at all can be and has been tarted up in theological drag.  How is anyone supposed to tell which positions are legitimate and which are merely prejudices?

One example of this came up a couple of Christmases ago when I criticized a liberal/progressive Christian reading of the Nativity stories that cast the Holy Family as "refugees."  I pointed out that there were other ways to read the texts, based on the narrative and indeed theological framework of the New Testament itself.  I was advised to study some theology by someone who was unaware that I've spent many years doing that.  What my reading had taught me was that the meanings of biblical stories and the doctrines Christians constructed were manifold, and largely determined by what the interpreter wanted to find: theologians work backward from their conclusions to get the texts to mean what they want them to mean.  (This is not true only of theologians, of course.)  The irony was that my critic assumed what he accused me of believing, that each story has only one meaning.  You couldn't prove that from a reading of theology; rather the opposite.

Sirota continued: 

Eventually, this will make the state the arbiter of orthodoxy. Courts and legislatures will have to determine that transphobia is a legitimate application of Protestant doctrine, but opposition to "race-mixing" or "popery" is not.

I can't see anything in the article that supports this overwrought claim.  Perhaps the courts and legislatures will take it on themselves to decide Christian doctrine, in defiance of the First Amendment, but there's nothing in the article or the case that obliges them to.  If anything, Sirota seems to want the courts to determine that transphobia is an illegitimate application of Protestant doctrine, which isn't acceptable either.  (I don't quite understand why he specifies "Protestant" here, since Catholic doctrine is also anti-trans.  I suspect he's alluding to - and misusing, in my judgment - scholarship which traces religious pluralism and toleration to the rise of Protestantism; but of that, more some other time.)

Now, it's true that probably most Americans (including their elected representatives) don't understand the First Amendment, largely because they don't see why it should prevent them from imposing their beliefs on other people, at their expense.  I've mentioned before some gay Christians I know who, not content with a mere civil ceremony, wanted the government to force their churches to provide them with a church wedding.  They didn't care that this would violate the First Amendment: they wanted it, and thought they were entitled.  (As white middle-class Christian-American males, of course they were!)

There are other ways of understanding this issue, of course, but it seems to me that even if a doctrine is a legitimate application of Protestant doctrine, it can still be regulated or forbidden by the state.  Slavery was held to be theologically legitimate for centuries by Catholic and Protestant divines, and though most people don't realize it, the American Civil War and Emancipation did not change that.  Even if your church still considers slavery to be in conformance with the will of God, it is still illegal for you to own other human beings.  The same can be said of polygamy: there is nothing in the Bible to forbid it, and it appears that Christianity abandoned the practice not for theological reasons but because Roman society disapproved of it.  (Oh ye of little faith, letting the World determine doctrine for you!)  If Protestants want to burn papists, or vice versa, because of their sincerely held theological doctrines, tough luck.  Nor is the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy acceptable because the Church hierarchy refused to do anything about it.  Because the United States does not, thanks to the Bill of Rights, have a state religion, we are not at the mercy of theologians in deciding public policy.

Sirota concluded:

And that was precisely Madison's complaint in the Memorial and Remonstrance in 1785, that such policies imply "that the Civil Magistrate is a competent judge of Religious Truth . . . an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages."

James Madison certainly did not mean that churches should be given free rein, however.  Remember that he opposed tax exemptions for churches and a chaplain in the Congress.  He was correct that the Civil Magistrate is not a competent judge of religious truth; I would only add that neither is the theologian, as shown by their contradictory opinions in all ages.  No one is.  Happily, as I've already said, the magistrate need not judge religious truth; he or she only needs to keep the arrogant pretensions of churchmen and believers from disturbing the public peace.  "Only" is probably not the right word here, because it's no small task to balance the competing claims of religious freedom, which usually involve one religion's freedom versus another's.  Even if believers could agree on what their gods require, their gods have no authority in this country.

Taking Offense

Avedon linked to this post at Digby's blog, responding to a dissent by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about establishments of religion.  (Justice Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.)  The quotation from Scalia reads:

Some there are—many, perhaps—who are offended by public displays of religion. Religion, they believe, is a personal matter; if it must be given external manifestation, that should not occur in public places where others may be offended. I can understand that attitude: It parallels my own toward the playing in public of rock music or Stravinsky. And I too am especially annoyed when the intrusion upon my inner peace occurs while I am part of a captive audience, as on a municipal bus or in the waiting room of a public agency.

"tristero," the blogger, properly points out that offense is not the issue.

Obviously, the issue is not that the display of religion is offensive but that the establishment of any religion by a government is extremely dangerous (see the Middle East) and that the government sanctioned display of a specific religion strongly implies establishment.

Unfortunately tristero continues with some childish personal slams against Scalia, which may well be justified but are beside the point.  Does he, or anyone, seriously want to claim that taste in music is relevant to a judge's competence as a judge?  After all, Scalia has a law degree from Harvard Law School and was an editor of the school review, just like another great Constitutional scholar we all know, so how can anyone doubt his qualifications or his authority?

Aside from Scalia's actual arguments, that is.  As tristero says, the issue is not one of personal offense or taste but the First Amendment, which forbids the government to establish any religion.  The Establishment Clause is not easy to interpret, like so much of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, so it's legitimate to debate whether a given practice constitutes an establishment of religion.  In the case of prayers and invocations before government functions, I think it's obvious that they violate the Establishment Clause, as did James Madison, but they've been doing so ever since the first US Congress commenced, and that camel long ago made itself at home in the tent.  I'm all in favor of kicking it out, but I know it won't be easy.

What concerns me is that Scalia isn't the only one who makes this mistake.  (I'll try to write more about this later; the rest of his dissent seems to be similarly wrongheaded.)  I recall a suit, in the 1990s I think, by a group of people to prevent an official prayer at Indiana University commencements.  The petitioners claimed that the prayer was offensive and therefore shouldn't be part of the ceremony.  But offense is not a legal reason not to include the prayer.  (I wonder how much of a role offense played in Elmbrook School District v. John Doe, the case Scalia was writing about.  Topic for further research, and soon.)  It may well be an ethical reason, or one of courtesy, but as a legal reason, not at all.  It's alarming that liberals are as confused about the First Amendment as conservatives are.

The Stupid Is Strong in This One

The Stupid is strong in this one, liked today on Facebook by a friend who ... well, probably I can't expect him to know any better.  My answer, which I posted as a comment, is that I'm fine with displaying the Ten Commandments in public, as long as it's the work of churches, synagogues, and private citizens.  Governments are another matter.  And people who try to confuse the issue, as many would-be theocrats do, are another matter as well.  I have to admit, though, that many of them don't know they're confusing the issue.  They clearly can't grasp the principles involved.  Even more dispiriting, neither can many of those who would oppose the public display of the Decalogue, or other public displays of piety by private citizens.  How to implement freedom of religion and the separation of church and state would be messy enough with the best will in the world, and unfortunately, many of the loudest kibitzers don't have the best will in the world.

Hi, We're From ACT-UP, and We're Doing an Act of Civil Disobedience

I've been watching the documentary How to Survive a Plague, and I wish I'd seen it before, so that I could have put this bit in some earlier posts about freedom of speech and the First Amendment.  The film includes a clip from CSPAN showing Senator Jesse Helms denouncing the AIDS activist group ACT-UP, who had sheathed his home in a giant canvas condom.  Helms said that there'd be no problem if homosexuals would just keep their dirty business to themselves, and shut their mouths.  Another senator, who wasn't identified as far as I could tell but he was another old white guy, said to Helms:

Sir, when we started this colloquy, I thought I was on your side, especially the First Amendment.  And under the First Amendment people don't have to shut their mouths.  They have a right to speak.

Helms, evidently slightly nonplussed, responded:

Well, uh, they can speak, as long as they don't offend anybody else, I suppose.

So there you have it, all my fellow GLBTQs and all liberals everywhere who think that freedom of speech doesn't extend to offensive "hate" speech: you're on the same side as Jesse Helms.  He was all for your freedom of speech as long as you didn't offend anybody.  By "anybody" he meant right-thinking people who agreed with him, just as you want to shield yourselves and those who agree with you.  You see?  People can come together on contentious issues of civil liberties.

Put the Constitution on the Ground. Walk Away Slowly from the Constitution

Justin Elliott reports that Sarah Palin has tried to back down from her previous criticism of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the First Amendment. Of course, she did so while basically repeating her criticism; it's a common tactic.

“Obviously my comment meant that when we’re told we can’t say ‘God bless you’ in graduation speeches or pray before a local football game but these wackos can invoke God’s name in their hate speech while picketing our military funerals, it shows ridiculous inconsistency,” Palin told [The Daily Caller]. “I wasn’t calling for any limit on free speech, and it’s a shame some folks tried to twist my comment in that way. I was simply pointing out the irony of an often selective interpretation of free speech rights.”

As Elliott points out, Palin still doesn't understand the difference between freedom of speech and the Establishment clause, which prohibits government involvement in religion. But as I wrote Wednesday, Palin is far from alone in her confusion. I believe that most Americans agree with her, especially when it comes to speech that offends them.

Jon Stewart weighed in on the topic, for example.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

You know, I get the impression that Stewart doesn't really like "Principled Behavior." But he doesn't have much to say about it, other than that he really really really dislikes Westboro Baptist Church. So do I, but how much courage does it take for him to say so? It's like Sarah Palin getting up in front of her fans and denouncing Barack Obama. Attacking Phelps is one of the safest things you can do in America. So what's the point?

Stewart goes on to address the recent dismissal of a star Brigham Young University basketball player for violating the school's honor code by having sex with his girlfriend. Like numerous other mainstream commentators, but more grudgingly, Stewart credits BYU for sticking to its principles, but you can see that it still bothers him, because as a normal American he can't understand a school's willingness to sacrifice a winning player and lose games, maybe even the season, for any reason. To show how worldly he is, he cements his point with ... a rape joke.

By the way, I don't think that BYU deserves credit for sticking to its principles. First you have to have good principles. BYU Coach Dave Rose let it slip when he told the press, "It's not about right or wrong, it's about commitment." While there is something to be said for this -- other things being equal, people should honor the commitments they make -- it is about right or wrong.

But back to freedom of speech. The other night on Facebook, RWA1 linked to a Cato Institute post on the Supreme Court's ruling, and commented that someday Phelps would say the wrong thing to the wrong person. "And?" I asked him in a comment. I presume he had in mind something like this:

A day after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Westboro Baptist Church's right to protest against homosexuality at military funerals, the fallen Marine's father, who unsuccessfully sued the controversial Kansas congregation, warned that the church's protests will eventually spark violence.

"Something is going to happen," Albert Snyder told CNN Thursday. "Somebody is going to get hurt."
"You have too many soldiers and Marines coming back with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and they (the Westboro protesters) are going to go to the wrong funeral and the guns are going to go off."
"And when it does," Snyder said. "I just hope it doesn't hit the mother that's burying her child or the little girl that's burying her father or mother. It's inevitable."

Well, so much for the popular notion that our troops are fighting to defend our freedoms. I sympathize with Mr. Snyder, but he's trampling on the Bill of Rights and justifying violence against people who exercise the freedom of speech that Americans supposedly enjoy. His fake concern about "the mother that's burying her child or the little girl that's burying her father or mother" is repugnant, given the history of violence, both official and vigilante, against dissenters in this country. It may be less of a problem than it used to be, but Noam Chomsky recalls how demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the early 60s were routinely attacked by onlookers. I don't believe that opponents of American wars have ever picketed the funerals of American soldiers who fought in them, but the enduring "hippies spitting on veterans" myth is a reminder that a good many Americans regard any opposition to our wars, anywhere, as an assault on Our Troops, to be answered with violence.

Mr. Snyder, who complained that the Court lacked "the common sense that God gave a goat," also said:

"When my son died, I knew two days ahead of time that they were coming ... Because of (the protesters') presence, I had police coming out of the woodwork, I had sheriffs. I had a SWAT team. I had emergency vehicles. I had media coming in," Snyder said. "All I wanted to do was have a private dignified funeral for my son. "They turned it into a three-ring circus," Snyder said.

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If Mr. Snyder had won in the Supreme Court, there would still have to be police and sheriffs and SWAT teams to keep the Westboro gang away from the funerals they seek to picket. For that matter, the Phelpses "were picketing on a public street 1,000 feet from the site of the funeral; they complied with the law and with instructions from the police, and they protested quietly and without violence." If there weren't so many Americans who want to commit violence against protesters, all those police and sheriffs and SWAT teams wouldn't be necessary.

When asked what his next step will be, Snyder replied. "The thing that just hits me the hardest is all the hatred in this country."

"And I think if I wanted to look to what I'm going to do in the future, I feel like that maybe there's where I need to be," Snyder said, "to try do something with all the hatred that's in this country."

Maybe Mr. Snyder could start by looking in the mirror. Or he could concentrate on the living, and worry about Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is still being held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement at Quantico despite never having been convicted of any crime, with this new fillip (via):

A lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking secret government files to WikiLeaks, has complained that his client was stripped and left naked in his cell for seven hours on Wednesday. ...

The soldier’s clothing was returned to him Thursday morning, after he was required to stand naked outside his cell during an inspection, Mr. Coombs said in a posting on his Web site.

“This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification,” Mr. Coombs wrote. “It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. Pfc. Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation.”

First Lt. Brian Villiard, a Marine spokesman, said a brig duty supervisor had ordered Private Manning’s clothing taken from him. He said that the step was “not punitive” and that it was in accordance with brig rules, but he said that he was not allowed to say more.

“It would be inappropriate for me to explain it,” Lieutenant Villiard said. “I can confirm that it did happen, but I can’t explain it to you without violating the detainee’s privacy.”

Even the AP reported the story, so it's not like the facts are either under dispute or hard to learn.

It's a good thing the Supreme Court ruled as it did, or protests like this (via) might be illegal too.



Notice that not one but two Republican Congresspeople attended the rally and egged the frothers on. As Greenwald wrote, "I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn't give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents." It reminded me of old clips of black kids being escorted by soldiers into formerly segregated schools, while white yahoos howled at them.


Are those Orange County bigots entitled to their freedom of speech? Of course, though I don't think their rights are in any jeopardy. And I can imagine someone fretting that someday somebody will snap, given all the hatred in this country, and the guns are going to go off, and they pray that the bullets won't hit the innocent blond, blue-eyed child whose parents brought him along to protest against the Muslims, but It's Inevitable.

The Trouble Isn't That People Are Ignorant

The Supreme Court has ruled, 8-1, that the Westboro Baptist Church has the right under the First Amendment to protest outside soldiers' funerals. According to Justin Elliott at Salon, Sarah Palin is among those who are outraged by the decision. She tweeted:

Common sense & decency absent as wacko "church" allowed hate msgs spewed@ soldiers' funerals but we can't invoke God's name in public square

Elliott's article is titled "Sarah Palin's bizarre view of the First Amendment," and over on his Twitter feed Glenn Greenwald asked: "Can't someone just sit down with Sarah Palin and slowly explain the First Amendment - what it does and doesn't do?"

Elliott went on to quote Palin's complaint from a radio interview in October 2008 --

If they convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.

-- and Glenn Greenwald's rebuttal:

The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.

As much fun as it is to make fun of Palin's aggressive misinformation, she's not the only American who could benefit from such instruction. Greenwald alludes, for example, to pundit Maureen Dowd's "equally stupid comment when she complained that her First Amendment rights were being violated by the McCain campaign's refusal to allow her on their campaign plane." Remember Juan Williams's dismissal from NPR for making some ill-considered remarks on Fox? I agree that Williams shouldn't have been fired, but it wasn't his First Amendment rights that were infringed. (If not being allowed to say whatever you want on TV violates your right of free speech, then I should be allowed to demand regular appearances on the O'Reilly Show, or All Things Considered, or the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times.) And as Elliott pointed out in passing, Palin's remark about invoking "God's name in the public square" refers to the Establishment clause of the First Amendment and "is really a separate issue," but on that issue too she has lots of company.

But it's not only the Right who want to be spared any criticism of their views, or any public expression of views that they dislike. In online debates I've often encountered people from all over the political spectrum who regard mere disagreement with their opinions as a violation of their freedom of speech. I've written before about atheists having hissyfits over Christian billboards, even expressing pleasure at the idea of burning down or defacing them. If antigay groups distribute antigay literature, many gay people want them silenced, not refuted.

It was liberal individuals who went to court some years ago to try to prevent official prayers during commencement ceremonies at my university, on the ground that they found such observance offensive; they lost, and rightly so. In this state, they probably would have lost even if they'd objected on the First Amendment ground that state institutions should not impose religious observance in its functions, but that would have been a stronger argument.

When a right-wing Christian professor at my university posted some viciously bigoted opinions on his blog, many gay students succeeded (briefly) in getting the university to shut down his blog, and went on to argue, unsuccessfully, that he should be fired. (At that time, anyone affiliated with the university -- students, faculty, staff -- was allotted disk space for their own web pages, so his blog was on a university server, though that meant the university as a state institution couldn't abridge his freedom of speech; the university restored his blog, but by then he'd moved it to another site.) The First Amendment? Hah! they snorted, the Constitution is just a piece of paper for rich white men -- but when, a few years later, there was talk of an amendment to the US Constitution that would ban recognition of same-sex marriage, some of the same people yammered that such an amendment would be unconstitutional. Which indicates that they were just as dumb in their way as Sarah Palin. Her understanding may be "bizarre," but I suspect that millions of Americans share it.

Some of the professor's gay critics claimed that the First Amendment doesn't protect hateful or offensive speech, which is false, as the Supreme Court's new ruling reminds us. I began browsing through the university-based web pages of several of those critics, and found quite a few with hateful and offensive content; I pointed out in a public discussion that if they got their way, they too would have to be silenced. That got a few nervous giggles, but none of them took it very seriously: they took for granted that they were the ones who would silence others, ignorant of how recently gay people had had to fight for their own First Amendment rights.

The American humorist Josh Billings wrote during the 1800s, "The trouble with the world ain't ignorance, its just that people know so much that isn't so." Ronald Reagan applied the quip to liberals, but as our right-wing friends show so abundantly, it applies to them too. Not that liberals or leftists are in any position to be complacent.

Of Course You Realize This Means War!

I'd been wondering vaguely when the first salvo would be fired, and then I came across this photoblog post. The War on Christmas Season is once again upon us! (And we haven't even had Thanksgiving yet.) There's also a link to this subliterate piece by a writer for Advertising Age, on how "Happy Holidays" has been relegated to the dustbin of history, comrades.

According to its caption, the photo above depicts

Michael Godsey, front, and his wife Deanna, portray Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus, in front of Christian activists during a live Christmas nativity scene procession outside the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, Nov. 22, 2010. Faith Action, a Christian organization, staged the demonstration to illustrate that such displays are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Eight adult actors in biblical costume, two camels and one donkey took part in the scene.

I could have sworn the person carrying the baby Jesus in the procession was another man, and the term "adult actors" (no doubt fresh from a teabagging scene) took me aback for a moment too. The blog post, by one Robert Hood, who styles himself "a news photographer", is no better:

Religious displays on public property have been argued over for decades. The establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” However, it also says Congress can’t impede the free exercise of religion, nor can it infringe on the freedom of speech. So, understandably there is considerable confusion around this issue.

And this post does nothing to dispel the confusion. In fact, it seems intended to increase it:

What do you think? Should Christmas be a federal holiday? Should religious displays be allowed on public property? If allowed, should we make distinctions between religions? If Christians can set up a Jesus manger on public property, can a coven perform Wiccan rituals on the steps of city hall? Am I favoring a religion if I participate in a Christmas giving tree, or am I helping a family during what would otherwise be a terribly painful morning on December 25th?

I wouldn't object to Christmas being a federal holiday if so many conservative Christians hadn't had hissyfits over the creation of federal holidays like Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday. Suppose there were a move to make some Muslim holiday (or, to use Hood's example, a Wiccan holiday) into a federal holiday; does anyone think that reactionary Christians would accept it as being on a par with Christmas? Believers should be, and as far as I know, are allowed to make "religious displays on public property" on their own initiative, and of course a coven should be allowed to perform Wiccan rituals on the steps of City Hall. If Hood participates in a Christmas giving tree, if he wants to 'favor a religion', that's his business as a private citizen -- why does he pretend it has anything to do with the First Amendment? I don't suppose there'd be any problem with, say, the workers at a Bureau of Motor Vehicles Office deciding to organize a giving tree. If the government at any level organizes charity, though, that is socialism according to the Christian frothers -- unless, apparently, it's done in the context of Christmas to undermine the wall of separation between religion and government.

Of course a procession like Faith Action's is protected by the First Amendment. But that has nothing to do with "religious displays" initiated and funded by the government. Would-be theocrats are always trying to get their cult of choice supported by the state, whether by getting it to set up Nativity displays for Christmas, official days of thanksgiving (though not of fasting -- that's so yesteryear), official prayers in school, and God all over government media ("In God We Trust" on money, which is fine if you put your trust in Mammon, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, and so on). I'm not offended by these acts in themselves. What bothers me is that they are intended to get the camel's nose into the tent, by creating legal precedents for an official establishment of religion, which can then be built on and extended.

Why would a church want to set up a creche on "public property" anyway? The only thing I can think of is that they want to make it look like our government -- which under the Constitution is godless, and for very good reason -- has an official religion. Considering the hysteria ginned up by essentially the same people over the building of a Muslim community center, including a prayer room, on private property in New York City, and over the building of mosques, also on private property, around the country, it's pretty clear what these people want to do: they want official Christian supremacy in the United States. They already have freedom of religion, but they want to be able to impose their religion on others, and make us pay for its expression on the public dime.

There are ambiguities in the law, and room for disagreement about how to resolve them. But the Christian theocrats prefer to throw out red herrings, and as Hood's post shows, there are plenty of people who will take them for serious discussion.