Defending Your Right to Bigotry

One of the ongoing problems with life in these United States is that while our Constitution guarantees several of our most fundamental human rights – notably free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion – the right to be treated decently, the right to live your life as you see fit and not be constantly called unpleasant names by bigots, and the right to be left the heck alone by evangelicals who call themselves “Christians” are not guaranteed under the Constitution. As a result, an apparently increasing number of people who understand political power, financial power, religious conservatism and fundamental, and advertising – but apparently have no grasp whatsoever of the complex concept of tolerance – keep using their wealth, power, and First Amendment rights to free speech to spew hate about anyone of whom they don’t approve. I wrote about it last December , and I’ve also questioned whether religious speech that confers commercial advantages on the broadcaster should be considered protected on the Main blog , but there’s a situation going on in Florida these days that makes me question if our entire nation hasn’t started Racing to the Bottom…

I picked up the story off of the Wisconsin Gazette website, but you can find it in other places online, too. Basically, the idea is that every year LGBT community organizers pick a day in the spring to be “Gay Day” at Disney World in Orlando, and put out notice over various Internet channels. It’s part of the local Pride Week celebration, which draws an estimated 160,000 people to the Orlando area each year, and brings something on the order of $150 million to the local economy (not counting what the participants spend at Disney World). Unfortunately, this idea creates a full-blown panic in the local conservative “Christian” organizations, who appear to be convinced that seeing gay people and same-sex couples in public will turn children who witness the event gay, and similar brain-dead bigotry. Unfortunately, the event isn’t sponsored by (or even acknowledged by) Disney, which means there’s no one the “Christian” groups can lobby to prevent it. So instead, they’ve decided to hire airplanes to pull giant banners warning people in the area about the event…

Why, exactly, this is being tolerated in the first place is a bit unclear. Certainly, there is a right to free speech involved, but if anyone tried flying giant banners saying “There are Jews at Disney World Today!” or “Warning: Islamic Groups in the Area!” they’d be sued down to their underwear and shut down by the authorities before the first tow plane left the ground. Most of these groups defend behavior like this by claiming that homosexual behavior of any kind is against their religion, but the legal precedents on that are fairly clear: you have a right to practice whatever faith you like, but not to impose it on anyone else. And as I noted last year, if you actually do believe in Christian theology, spending this kind of money to attack people of whom you do not approve when there are millions of hungry people who need food, homeless people who need shelter, and sick people who need medical care – not even in the rest of the world, but just here in the U.S. – is about as anti-Christian as you can possibly get…

In the long run, I’m really not sure what is worse – if these so-called “Christians” believe the hate they are spewing, or if they’re just doing it for political, social or financial gain. The latter is despicable; a perversion not merely of the Christian faith they are aping for their own ends but of the social and religious freedoms of the only nation on Earth that would put up with this nonsense in the first place. But the former means that this is true hate speech – people who not only believe the most preposterous nonsense because of their own fear and hatred, but are willing to attack the rights (and presumably the lives) of innocent people because of that fear and hatred. Either way, it’s truly sad to see a religion dedicated to peace, love, and universal brotherhood becoming the Accelerator in our Race to the Bottom…