An actress named Jennifer Lawrence has upset people on the Internet by making the following statement (with which, btw, I do not agree):
I just think it should be illegal to call somebody fat on TV. I mean, if we’re regulating cigarettes and sex and cuss words because of the effect it has on our younger generation, why aren’t we regulating things like calling people fat?
Much as I disagree, I see her point., but she confuses commercial speech (which is regulated because the Supreme Court has deemed it unworthy of full First Amendment protection) with mere statements of opinion. Personally, I don’t think the government has any business regulating anything that is said on TV.
Or on the Internet for that matter. Anyone who does not see how regulation of the former couldn’t lead to regulation of the latter is IMO not taking into account the way the enemies of free speech think.
And if the right to sound off about fatness doesn’t get your First Amendment juices flowing, perhaps this will:
A&E has placed Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson on indefinite hiatus following anti-gay remarks he made in a recent profile in GQ.
[…]
The news comes after Robertson compared homosexuality to bestiality in an interview with the magazine. He’ll likely appear in season four, which bows Jan. 15, since production is largely wrapped.
“It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus,” Robertson says in the January issue of the men’s magazine. “That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”
Robertson goes on to quote from the Bible, and I disagree with him just as I disagree with Jennifer Lawrence (who would probably want Robertson off the air along with the anti-fat bigots she deplores).
But I think the man is just as entitled to his opinion as I am to mine.
If there is such a thing as “sin,” it seems to me that one of the worst sins it is possible to commit nowadays is the sin of racism. When I was a kid, not only was racism much worse than it is today, but discrimination was legal in most places, and legally mandated in many. Such racial discrimination was a disgrace and needed to be done away with. But the inquisition going on today does not involve ferreting out discriminatory conduct, but discriminatory thought. Philosophically, a lot flows from that. Because, if it is legitimate to make racist thoughts a sin (even though they are not crimes), then why aren’t other bad thoughts up for grabs?
Whatever happened to the right to disagree?
MORE: Some people argue that a disagreement said to be grounded in religion ought to be judged by a different standard than other disagreements. Sorry, but I have long believed that whether an opinion is grounded in religion ought not to entitle it to any more protection than the same opinion not grounded in religion. Why should some opinions be more protected than others?
Comments
8 responses to “Since when are you not entitled to your opinion?”
Greg at RWR did not claim religion ought to be judged by different standards.
He showed clearly what he was saying was within the framework of the Civil Rights Act.
Actually, I’m arguing that our nation’s civil rights laws prohibit religious discrimination, and that A&E just violated those laws by firing someone for expressing a religious belief on a controversial social issue — indeed, for doing a close paraphrase of Scripture away from the workplace. If one can be fired for doing so, then one can equally be fired for attending the “wrong” house of worship that holds the “wrong” religious beliefs — making that statutory protection meaningless.
Okay – thanks for the clarification!
🙂
Just for clarification, after consideration one of your statements is terribly incorrect, of course that being “When I was a kid, not only was racism much worse than it is today, but discrimination was legal in most places, and legally mandated in many. Such racial discrimination was a disgrace and needed to be done away with. But the inquisition going on today does not involve ferreting out discriminatory conduct…” Racism is much worse today AND is legally mandated. My people suffer terrible today, those people being Caucasians with morals.
The racism I remember from my youth to which I refer involved racially motivated animosity against blacks by whites, as well as state enforced discrimination by whites against blacks.
As to religious discrimination, suppose a Muslim employee was fired for remarking that he believed in wife beating, and then cited the Quran in support of his beliefs. I fail to understand how citing a religious justification for an opinion endows that opinion with any special protection that it would not have in the absence of a religious justification. Do Muslims have a special right to condemn Jews and not be fired if they can cite passages in the Quran condemning them? Some Christians might also call Jews “Christ killers” and claim the Bible supports their position. Others might maintain that Christmas and Santa Claus are evil, etc.
All of these opinions are protected as free speech under the First Amendment, and the government has no right to censor them. But it seems to me that a private employer’s right to fire people for opinions he does not like has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
I also think that in order to show religious discrimination, it would have to be shown that the person fired was fired for being a Christian, or for being a Muslim. If, say, an employer’s policy was to fire anyone who supported wife beating (and not just Muslims), I don’t think claim of religious discrimination is valid unless it could be shown that it was implemented simply to discriminate against Muslims.
So, if A&E only fired Christians for making anti-gay remarks, but allowed Muslims or atheists to do so, there might be a valid claim of religious discrimination. And similarly, to allow only Christians to make anti-gay remarks would constitute religious discrimination (or anti-religious discrimination in the case of atheists) against others.
Just to be clear, I think the man is perfectly entitled to his opinion, and were I running A&E I would not have fired him for it. I am not sure that he is entitled to a job if his employer does not like his opinions, though.
Phil had some nice things to say about african-americans too! But! I must agree every time ann the man coulter goes on fox it looks like an act of bestiallity with an elephant to me!
The P.C. term for ‘fat’ is ‘gravitationally challenged.’ Some people use the term ‘horizontally challenged’ instead, but that term is not as commonly used. Fifty years ago, the P.C. term ‘big boned’ was widely used to mean ‘fat’, but nobody uses that anymore.
from Chocolatier in Berkeley, California
Hmm, gravitationally challenged. Does that mean, then, that we will soon see lesser bodies in orbit about the gravitationally challenged? Will they be spared the walk to the beach as the beach – or at least the tide – will come to them?
I’m curious about how much of the rise in the number and weight of the “gravitationally challenged” has to do with the USDA’s food pyramid that seems to be more attuned to rent seeking agricorps and less so to the requirements of a healthy diet.