Free speech and an Archbishop

I have only recently become aware of a blogger – http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/

I’m guessing that he and I would disagree on a number of subjects…me with my liberal/lefty politics (at least in some cases) and my anything-but-orthodox Christianity and he with a more right-wing CofE stance (I hope that's fair!).

However, why I like reading his blog is that he makes me think!

This morning I was drawn to this post

Pied For Christ

An interesting question raised by “His Grace” (and tweeted, which is how I picked up on it) was…

“If a Christian were to thrust a custard pie in the face of a homosexual, would it constitute a hate crime?”

I popped a comment on His Grace’s blog…

“It is an interesting characteristic of modern liberal thought that it is only liberal when you hold to the same views. Free speech? Yes - but only when that speech is to repeat the party line. As someone who holds general political views that I guess would be a fairly long way to the left of Your Grace's, it is a great sadness to me that any willingness to debate and argue a whole range of ideas has disappeared to be replaced by a mean-spirited (at best) attitude of "Shut up, or else!"
At this point there is, of course, a danger of hyperbole - allusions to Hitler loom on the horizon - which may be of little use but it seems to be true (with my very amateur historian hat on) that an early sign of totalitarianism is the suppression of anyone holding contrary views to the accepted wisdom of the state.”

It got me thinking about free speech (and thought) in general…

I do hold views that I know would generally place me on the left…at least in areas such as heath, education, monetary policy. But I find myself growing increasingly uncomfortable by the left’s abandonment of another “policy” that I hold just as dear…free speech.

Now, I am not naïve…I realise there are intolerant people in all walks of life and in every part of the political spectrum and that it’s not a new phenomenon. If in just consider my own experiences, I can vividly recall a member of the student’s union, thirty-odd years ago, red-faced and crashing his fist to the table to silence another member from making an argument for adding some left-wing governments to the press release we were preparing that detailed human rights abuses around world – it wasn’t union policy, so we were informed…ho hum…

But over the years, while still generally holding to the same politics, I have become increasingly disappointed and embarrassed by the left’s drift toward a strange kind of fascism.

As I mentioned in my comment above, there is a danger of hyperbole here…”You’re as bad as Hitler!”…fortunately, no they aren’t at least not yet…

But…speech is either free or is is not…the price of being free to shout for what I believe in is that someone else can shout back at me the exact opposite!

A little while back there was a discussion on the radio involving a Christian, an atheist and a Muslim – I’d like to be more specific but it was probably a good 6 or 7 years ago and I can’t find a reference to it on the web…so I’ll try to describe it as accurately as possible…

… although the topic had nothing overtly to do with homosexuality (see below), the presenter felt it necessary to bring it up. When asked for their views, the Muslim stated he believed it was “against God’s laws”. You could hear the sneer in the presenter’s voice as she said “Surely no one could believe that in this day and age” and then “Do you realise what you said could cause great offence to millions” (I’m not sure millions were listening, but there’s nothing wrong with a bit a self-promotion, I suppose.) The atheist then chipped in that such views “shouldn’t be allowed”. The interesting thing was the discussion was on faith schools and the atheist’s viewpoint was that they restricted free speech! It would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.

And it begs the question, why would the presenter ask the question if she truly didn’t believe anyone could hold a view contrary to (I assume) her own?

I thank God that gays were able to shout for their freedom over the last quarter of the century…but if we then say that no-one (Archbishop or otherwise) can even be allowed to believe that homosexuality is wrong, then we have just replaced one tyranny with another. And the problem for gays, as well as archbishops, is that today’s tyranny is tomorrow’s accepted norm and vice versa. If you don’t allow free (and perhaps yes, offensive) speech, then tomorrow, when the political climate changes (as it always does) it may be your particular group that is (once again?)  under repression…who will shout for you then?

One of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite films is from the American President when Andrew Shepherd says…

You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free"

Can free speech backfire…does it have dangers? Of course!

For every reasoned argument there’s at least one madman…

Terry Jones defiant despite murders in Afghanistan over Qur'an burning

Of course he’s an idiot…and yes, in my opinion, he does share some moral responsibility for the deaths (he must have known what was likely to happen!) although the largest moral responsibility rests with the killers themselves.

But to live without it…that would be the greatest danger…