26 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
During my years as an undergraduate at North Carolina State University, my daily Chic-Fil-A sandwich was usually accompanied by huge displays of aborted foetuses, or the charming words and signs of any of our homophobic, racist, and sexist preachers. Most of us found entertainment in seeing naïve first year students passionately try to reason with the irrational tirades of these people. While our campus police department and resource offices were bombarded with complaints, the brickyard remained a host for such hateful rants. The debate about free speech on our campus is not dissimilar to debates around Westboro Baptist Church, which keeps it classy with signs stating that “God hates fags” and “Thank god for dead soldiers”.
On 2 March, the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of the inflammatory group, protecting their right to picket the funerals of dead soldiers. The work of the church, which attacks popstars, the funerals of artists and anyone that they deem to be godless, is already divisive. The conversation becomes more emotionally charged when adding dead troops to the mix. It becomes difficult to focus on protecting free speech when insensitive picketers senselessly disturb the funerals of dead servicemen and women.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, two states, California and Illinois, have taken steps towards the rights of the church to picket the funerals of dead soldiers.
The California Assembly passed a bill to keep protesters away from funerals by a unanimous vote on 18 August. If the bill is passed, protesting within 1000 feet (305 metres) of a funeral during an hour before or after a ceremony would be “punishable by up to six months in jail” or a fine of $1,000.
On 14 August, a bill titled Let Them Rest in Peace Act was signed into law by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn. According to the new law, protestors must be at least 300 feet (92 metres) away from funerals, and are barred from protesting 30 minutes before and after the funerals. Upon signing the law, Governor Quinn made the statement that “every family has a fundamental right to conduct a funeral with reverence and dignity”, and that it was the duty of lawmakers to honour the sacrifices made by soldiers.
The sponsor of the bill, freshman senator and Tea Party darling, Marco Rubio, said that he could not “imagine anyone being against it, at least no one in their right mind”.
What is problematic about Rubio’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” approach to such legislation is that it makes any dissenters look like insensitive monsters. Such a conversation is not framed for a healthy debate about free speech. It is no surprise that the decision in California was unanimous, as any senator that would comment against such a bill would inevitably see their words warped and used in an advertisement against them during the next campaign season.
Growing up in North Carolina, home of one of the largest US Army bases, Fort Bragg, I know that anything involving service men and women heightens sensitivity but legislators must focus on the long-term implications of such decisions.
The experience of repeatedly having obscenities hurled at me by one of the preachers made me feel threatened, and I wanted him silenced. Being called a whore in public does not make for careful consideration of the parameters of free speech.
Our university never banned the preachers, and now I respect that decision. Hate and ignorance can not be banned and preventing citizens from speaking on public property would set a nasty precedent. The only way to combat these groups is to fight back and speak up, rather than just try to silence them.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index on Censorship
19 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
During one of the first major Republican debates in the presidential primary earlier this month in Iowa, Byron York, a journalist for the conservative Washington Examiner, asked Michele Bachmann a question that’s been on many minds but few tongues this summer.
In 2006, when you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea, and then you explained: ‘But the Lord said, be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husband.’ As president, would you be submissive to your husband?
The question drew gasps and boos from the mostly conservative audience, and Bachmann herself at first seemed taken aback by it. She nimbly turned the query into an opportunity to talk about how much she and her husband of almost 33 years love each other. And, in the end, the exchange did more damage to York than to her.
In the week since then, a perennially uncomfortable public debate has emerged over the role of religion and the US presidency, accompanied by a meta-debate over whether Americans — and, in particular, journalists — should even be asking questions about the relationship between the two.
Conventional wisdom says the Republican primary has crystalised over the last week into a race between three candidates who come with intriguing religious story lines: Bachmann, whose particularly Evangelical form of Christianity was the subject of a lengthy (and, to many, alarming) New Yorker profile last week; Mitt Romney, whose Mormon heritage elicited much suspicion during his last run for the job in 2008; and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who angered atheists by hosting an 8,000-person strong Christian prayer revival two weeks ago in which he asked God to help guide a “nation in crisis” when its politicians have proven unable to do that alone.
NPR characterised Perry’s event as sparking a “holy war” among critics “who claim it [was] Jesus-exclusive and political.” The New Yorker profile of Bachmann, which followed shortly thereafter, upped the ante on the religious alarmism. And then Byron York asked Bachmann, a Tea Party favorite, about her Biblically based beliefs on the “submissive” role of women to their husbands.
Since John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic in the White House, Americans have prided themselves on holding no religious litmus test for the office. The separation of church and state — as central to the American political identity as protections for free speech also enshrined in the First Amendment — means elected officials can’t impose their beliefs on others but also have a right to believe in whatever they want themselves.
Bachmann and Perry, though, have touched a nerve among voters and commentators who aren’t convinced they share that same interpretation of the establishment clause. And in that context, York’s query was extremely relevant.
As the discussion on one popular legal blog put it:
“Rep. Bachmann’s religious beliefs are a mandatory topic for thorough examination and public debate. Why? Because she espouses a brand of Christianity that seeks not merely to transform the institutions of government, but to absorb them into a reconstructed society build upon a foundation of Old Testament law, a goal which implicates the Constitution and which strikes at the heart of the idea of secular government.”
York’s many critics since last week of course will disagree with this. But to suggest that all queries along these lines should be off-limits for the next year — particularly as they relate to politicians who have willingly made such a public show of their private faith — is disingenuous. Yes, Perry and Bachmann have a right guaranteed by the Constitution to follow any faith they chose. But voters and journalists have a right, too, to ask about how that faith will impact a candidate’s positions in office when the evidence thus far suggests that it might. Critics who want to shout down those questioners, claiming offense, stifle an important election-year debate.
Emily Badger is Index on Censorship’s US Editor
19 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
During one of the first major Republican debates in the presidential primary earlier this month in Iowa, Byron York, a journalist for the conservative Washington Examiner, asked Michele Bachmann a question that’s been on many minds but few tongues this summer.
In 2006, when you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea, and then you explained: ‘But the Lord said, be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husband.’ As president, would you be submissive to your husband?
The question drew gasps and boos from the mostly conservative audience, and Bachmann herself at first seemed taken aback by it. She nimbly turned the query into an opportunity to talk about how much she and her husband of almost 33 years love each other. And, in the end, the exchange did more damage to York than to her.
In the week since then, a perennially uncomfortable public debate has emerged over the role of religion and the US presidency, accompanied by a meta-debate over whether Americans — and, in particular, journalists — should even be asking questions about the relationship between the two.
Conventional wisdom says the Republican primary has crystalised over the last week into a race between three candidates who come with intriguing religious story lines: Bachmann, whose particularly Evangelical form of Christianity was the subject of a lengthy (and, to many, alarming) New Yorker profile last week; Mitt Romney, whose Mormon heritage elicited much suspicion during his last run for the job in 2008; and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who angered atheists by hosting an 8,000-person strong Christian prayer revival two weeks ago in which he asked God to help guide a “nation in crisis” when its politicians have proven unable to do that alone.
NPR characterised Perry’s event as sparking a “holy war” among critics “who claim it [was] Jesus-exclusive and political.” The New Yorker profile of Bachmann, which followed shortly thereafter, upped the ante on the religious alarmism. And then Byron York asked Bachmann, a Tea Party favorite, about her Biblically based beliefs on the “submissive” role of women to their husbands.
Since John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic in the White House, Americans have prided themselves on holding no religious litmus test for the office. The separation of church and state — as central to the American political identity as protections for free speech also enshrined in the First Amendment — means elected officials can’t impose their beliefs on others but also have a right to believe in whatever they want themselves.
Bachmann and Perry, though, have touched a nerve among voters and commentators who aren’t convinced they share that same interpretation of the establishment clause. And in that context, York’s query was extremely relevant.
As the discussion on one popular legal blog put it:
“Rep. Bachmann’s religious beliefs are a mandatory topic for thorough examination and public debate. Why? Because she espouses a brand of Christianity that seeks not merely to transform the institutions of government, but to absorb them into a reconstructed society build upon a foundation of Old Testament law, a goal which implicates the Constitution and which strikes at the heart of the idea of secular government.”
York’s many critics since last week of course will disagree with this. But to suggest that all queries along these lines should be off-limits for the next year — particularly as they relate to politicians who have willingly made such a public show of their private faith — is disingenuous. Yes, Perry and Bachmann have a right guaranteed by the Constitution to follow any faith they chose. But voters and journalists have a right, too, to ask about how that faith will impact a candidate’s positions in office when the evidence thus far suggests that it might. Critics who want to shout down those questioners, claiming offense, stifle an important election-year debate.
Emily Badger is Index on Censorship’s US Editor
19 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
Thanks to every American coming-of-age comedy set in the hallways of a high school, the British quiz me on my own experiences as an angry teenager in North Carolina. After covering pep rallies and the prom, I am inevitably asked about the image of a high school football coach awkwardly explaining the evils of teenaged sex. My parents decided to opt out of my state-mandated sex education, but my disappointed peers relayed to me a cringe-worthy experience involving our stout wrestling coach rattling off scripted warnings about the dangers of teenage fornication, and the magic of abstinence.
In my high school, learning about sex was a case study in the blind leading the blind. Sex was a secret, and we turned to our peers for the answers, rather than state-mandated sermons. It was cool to already know about sex, and if you didn’t, you were reduced to trying to glean explanations from more experienced peers, and discretely using Urban Dictionary to decode the information. Sex was confusing, but many of us felt too ashamed to admit our ignorance. As teenagers in the early noughties, school internet access served as a resource, answering the questions that we did not feel comfortable asking aloud.
On 15 August, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit against Camdenton school district, in Missouri, on behalf of four LGBT organisations that have had their sites blocked by filters on the school district’s computers, arguing that it violates the First Amendment. The suit, filed on behalf of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG National), the Matthew Shepard Foundation, DignityUSA and Campus Pride, involves a filter that blocks websites providing information on LGBT issues, rather than merely blocking sexually explicit content, and demands that it be taken down. The ACLU sent a letter to the district in May, notifying them that it was unconstitutional to block four websites known for providing information on anti-bullying and gay-straight alliances. After unblocking a couple of sites, the school board refused to unblock hundreds of other websites that provide information for LGBT students, forcing students to ask for permission every time they visit one of the sites. Anti-LGBT sites, on the other hand, are unrestricted. It is outrageous to think that a teenager would have to publicly announce such a private matter in order to access information.
According to a policy briefing published by the Guttmacher Institute in January 2011, Missouri is one of 26 states that “stress” abstinence as the best option for teens. Missouri’s sex education program also leaves out a discussion of sexual orientation, and the proper usage of contraception.
An out of touch and uninformed sex education program leaves most students with unanswered questions, and this is most true for LGBT students, who have less access to resources than their heterosexual counterparts.
Jody M Huckaby, executive director of PFLAG National, an organisation that has provided information to young members of the LGBT community for almost forty years, believes that blocking such websites can be detrimental to youths wrestling with questions of sexuality:
Many LGBT students either don’t have access to the Internet at home or, if they do, they don’t feel safe accessing this information on their home computers. In order to ensure the physical and mental well-being of LGBT youth — especially given the wide access to negative information on LGBT issues — these resources must be accessible.
In addition to inadequate sex education, LGBT students also face the risk of harassment. According to a 2009 report by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), “nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students experienced harassment at school in the past year, and two-thirds felt unsafe because of their sexual orientation”.
Camdenton school district should take note of this increase in bullying and suicide, as their students are unable to get answers through a sensible sex education program. They should take a step towards prioratising the sexual health and safety of their students and remove the filters.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index on Censorship.
