By Desmond Rutherford (Adelaide, Australia) MAR 4 | To some non-US citizens, free speech carries with it a responsibility for fact, truthfulness and civility in the form in which, the speech is expressed.
In other words, freedom of opinion and freedom to think whatever a person wants is the core primacy, inviolate, and without question part of the absolute birthright of each and every individual human being.
What should not be protected is when such opinion is expressed without justification verified by fact and without respect for civil discourse.
How then should 'fact' and 'civil discourse' be defined? Not easily, I am sorry to say.
One is tempted to claim, that fact is what Fox News rarely uses, and that civil discourse is that which is foreign to Westboro Baptist Church and the Right Wing of politics. However none of these are satisfactory examples for the purposes of definition. Fact must be a provable reality, but that seems to be just too much trouble for many people. Civil discourse is to simply propose conjecture or opinion for discussion without malice, even if a little snide at times.
Despite other countries and cultures having consequences in law for the misuse of free speech, the USA by virtue of its founding documents, should be in an ideal position to be encouraged to evolve an answer which will demand respect for civil discourse and freedom of expression, subject to taking responsibility for one's own utterances.
At the moment, the nature of free speech when it is misused and abused by organisations like WBC, Fox News, NOM, and others, to impose their opinions on the culture through inciting irrational fear and ignorance needs to be curtailed in the interests of everyone's right to pursue happiness; to be free from persecution as well as free from performing terrorists of reason.
The 8-1 decision by the Supreme court seems to me to bypass the responsible curtailment of free speech as outlined above. Citing the court ruling as preserving free speech misses the point of the responsibility argument even if it has sustained the validity that LGBT Laws of equality do not endanger the freedom of religions to hold their own beliefs.
The right to freedom of sexual expression must be fought and won on the inalienable birthright to choose whom you love. That choice whether influenced by genes or Hollywood, must be freely available to everyone, equally, without attempts to denigrate that love and its expression through dogma or opinion. The right to love is inalienable. The right to express that love sexually is a matter for the consenting adults involved and no one else.
The alternative is slavery to the opinions of others, even in our most private and intimate moments of life.
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