On T-Shirts and Free Speech

[jackofallgeeks]

If I were able to access my archives here, I'd link back a month or so to
the story of a kid who was punished for wearing a t-shirt depicting a gun
at school. There was a nice bit of discussion in the comments, particularly
from photoholic62 (hopefully I didn't butcher your username,
Dawn).

Today's article is similar, if perhaps a bit more controversial, and with
the completely opposite resolution. Some kid in Chicago sued his school
because they wouldn't let him wear an
anti-gay t-shirt in school. Now in this case I can definitely
understand a bit of outrage, because unlike (I'd argue) the 'patriotic',
pro-military gun t-shirt previously discussed, a shirt saying "Be Happy, Not
Gay" is pretty directly offensive. The school banned the kid from wearing
the shirt, he sued, and he lost the original case -- but that decision has
been over turned by an appeals court, on the basis of free speech.

I'd like to discuss the t-shirt bit in particular (especially thoughts
on the fact that a gun was banned but anti-gay sentiment was not), and
anything else that might come up in the comments, but I'd also like to talk
about free speech. It's kind of an important thing, I think. It's what
separates us from the animals. Well, OK, that might be a bit of a stretch
(I know some rather out-spoken guinea pigs), but the fact remains that it's
important.

There's a quote I'm a big fan of, attributed to Voltaire but apparently never said by him,
that goes, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it." That kind of sums up my opinion here. On the one
hand, there's the argument of the slipper slope, where if we censor ourselves
from expressing anything that might offend someone else, eventually we'll be
unable to express anything at all. I don't think that's a real and present
danger, but it's definite a concern in so much as nearly anything you say
could offense SOMEONE.

If we devote ourselves slavishly to freedom of speech then, yes, lots of
things people say will be things we'd like to not hear. But I think that
(1) sometimes we need to hear what we don't want to hear and, (2) I don't
think forcing people to not-say it helps anything at all; I think it hurts
everything. When someone says something offensive or ignorant, we have an
opportunity to confront them and argue to point in reasonable discourse. If
we allow and encourage people to say exactly what they think, then we're
given the opportunity to educate them and confront them directly. If
they're censored in public, they'll still THINK the same things, but it will
quietly fester inside of them and they will spread it privately, sharing it
insularly with like-minded people and spreading it to those who don't know
any better. If it's never said it's never talked about, it's never
confronted, and it's never changed.

Comments

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

I've become more of two minds on free speech recently. There's not a perfectly bright line between speech and action, and context matters a lot.

So, imagine the kid wears his anti-gay T-shirt to the HS I went to - where "gay" was used as a put-down, and openly gay kids might get laughed at, but that was about the worst of it. There, I'm inclined to say that the shirt is odious, but ought not be censored (unless there's a blanket policy of uniforms, or some such).

Then, imagine the kid wears it to a school where gay kids have recently been beaten up pretty severely (still happens). I'm much less inclined to let it pass. Then the shirt becomes part of an atmosphere of intimidation, and normalization of hate, that tends to reinforce dangerous behaviors. Of course, making the kid take his shirt off doesn't change his mind (or, for a kid, probably his parents' minds). It may even make him angrier. But that's not necessarily the point - the point is to interrupt the effects on the gay kids, so that they don't have to live under perceived threat.

It's hard for me to draw the policy line properly. In the moral abstract, I'm inclined to say that speech not intended as a good-faith entry into the public discourse or a matter of deep importance to the utterer (e.g., religious discourse) loses much of its privilege if it's harmful (or even, maybe, distressing) to someone else. Turning that principle into a reasonable law is a different matter. I'm inclined to draw it somewhere in the neighborhood of prohibiting speech that feeds into an extant situation of non-speech violence or threat.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

So I had a very well-though-out reply worked out at work, where I can't access the site, and I've lost it somewhere on 295. I'll try and get the general gist.

So, a t-shirt is less offensive depending on the context it's in. I submit that, at least in part, this is because of what that t-shirt, in that context, is representing. The t-shirt itself, within some margin, is not the root problem but rather the attitude and ideas it's giving expression to. By censoring what and how people say things, you're at best treating the symptom rather than the disease. At at the cost of attacking what I think is a basic right, free speech. A school where gay kids are brutalized for being gay will STILL be a hostile environment regardless of what shirts kids are wearing. And a less-hostile environment is still less hostile regardless of what shirts kids are wearing.

I think public policy is a supremely BAD place to try to formalize what people can and can not say. If someone is DOING something -- committing violence, actively inciting violence, actually harassing someone -- then call them that. Trying to delineate what's proper expression is a dangerous area to get into, I think, particularly for something like a government.

I would say don't prohibit speech, but definitely hold people responsible for improper and illegal behavior.