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By: Joel Dietz

Joel Dietz — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:33:30 +0000

Andrew,

I’ve never lived in the South for any extended period of time and have to admit that my personal inclination is to view utterances of the f-word as much more offensive than the use of the word “redneck.” Consequently, I’m not sure we have any substantial disagreement, although I might view “discrimination” as more appropriate than “persecution,” with respect to both evangelicals and gays. By ‘state violence’ I mean things including the ACLU’s persistent and often successful efforts to limit various practices, including school prayer.

“The best long-term solution is perhaps not definition or punishment but the cultivation of minds and hearts that do not hate”

Hari,

Well said.

All,

However, to breaking out of circles and’concord’ and whether or not we may achieve it in our discussions of how we speak, and whether and how a focus on the current status of someone as ‘persecuted,’ ‘discriminated’ or otherwise ‘oppressed’ can influence evaluative methods for speech, perhaps it would help it we take a different conflict not quite as subject to the emotive reactions present here (and if you wish Nathan, please also chime in). Suppose, for instance, we consider the Israel-Palestine conflict. Is it worse to insult one side or the other? Is it worse to make critical comments about one side or the other? Does whether or not it is worse depend on who you are?

In this case, both sides can claim to have a historical and/or current ‘persecuted’ status, but I am not sure to what extent that is helpful for the purposes of dialogue. Dialogue which, although it may not be able to end conflict, may be able to contain and or minimize destructive manifestations of it.

Thoughts?

By: Quentin Kirk

Quentin Kirk — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:19:49 +0000

Like Hari’s entry above.

By: Hari

Hari — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:22:30 +0000

May I make a suggestion?

“Hate speech”, speech spoken in anger and hatred, is not good because it a) leads only to more hatred, never to concord, and b) causes suffering.

The origin of such speech is a mind and heart that hates.

The best long-term solution is perhaps not definition or punishment but the cultivation of minds and hearts that do not hate, that love concord.

Evangelicals have such a possibility in the injuctions to turn the cheek and love the enemy. I am not very familiar with homosexual culture but I trust they also have this sort of encouragement. It is this sort of common ground which, once sown with seeds of friendliness, might bear the richest crop.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:41:33 +0000

I really don’t think we’re understanding each other. Let’s go back to basics. I agree that this [should be] a discussion about the “appropriateness of various speeches in different contexts,” or, more specifically, a discussion about whether it is somehow “worse” or “more offensive” for Southern evangelicals to make disparaging remarks about gay people than it is for Northern liberals to make disparaging remarks about Southern evangelicals. While we’re here, I’ll just re-reiterate that BOTH ARE BAD. We’re trying to determine whether one is worse, and if so, on what grounds.

I don’t know where you’re getting this thing about “advocating for State violence.” I assume by “one” you mean me? Joel, what makes you think that I would ever advocate for state violence, or, in this context at least, for state intervention of any kind? When did I imply that homophobic evangelicals should be jailed or beaten for their views? It’s strange that you are still throwing around red herrings this late in our discussion. As noted above, our original dispute was about which of these two kinds of speech should be considered “worse,” according to some (as-yet-not-fully-defined) abstract ethical rubric. That discussion is not at all the same as a discussion about how speech should be legislated. The whole discussion about legislation was just (I thought) a tangent in which I was trying to establish that homosexuals are persecuted not only informally, but also by the federal government. This does not imply anything about how homophobes are, or should be, treated.

Speaking of which: Are you really putting the burden of proof on me to show that homosexuals are persecuted? Really? I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s my job to establish that. To return to my oversimplistic analogy: Would you agree that blacks were persecuted in 1930s South Carolina? Do you agree that that fact is pertty self-explanatory, and do you see how it would be a bit frustrating to have to prove it “in the form of an argument”? But just to throw you a bone: How about the fact that in our ostensibly secular country, Lawrence v. Texas was decided in 2003, and not, say, in 1803?

Again, we’ve already both agreed, several times, to the proposition (first asserted by me) that Southern evangelicals are persecuted to some degree. The question is whether homosexuals are in a comparatively worse position and, if so, whether that matters. But honestly, I think we’re going in circles at this point.

By: Joel Dietz

Joel Dietz — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:31:38 +0000

This discussion, as I understand it, was on the appropriateness of various speeches in different contexts and my primary and only significant argument is that if one is to judge various patterns of “bashing” as worse and better, one should provide a justification for why one views one type as better than another. This is especially important, I believe, when one advocates for State violence (in the form of legal action, or otherwise) against persons using forms of speech you find objectionable. Absent a such justification, one wonders if you are simply prosecuting the interests of a class to which you belong and from which you presumably receive special benefit — no different from person who argues passionately in favor of loose laws for cigarettes while drawing a salary from a Tobacco lobbying organization.

Your citation of the persecution experienced by homosexuals has not yet taken the form of an argument, so I do not see how I can be faulted for not responding to it. A logical argument might be that persecuted peoples should be extended special legal protection for moral reasons, but then you would probably have to distinguish between various types of persecution — something you seem loath to do. As I’ve stated, by simple measurements regarding ‘power gradients,’ Southern evangelicals probably also qualify as persecuted people to some degree.

Consequently, your statement about whether or not people are free to hate is somewhat of a non-sequitur. Certainly they are. This discussion is instead about appropriate responses to speech in which persons express their dislike, disapproval, or outright hatred of other people’s behavior.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:12:08 +0000

For future reference: there’s never any need to feel bashful about an extended discussion here. That’s what The Row Boat is for!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:51:08 +0000

Joel, you seem like a smart guy, so I think you might be being coy, as an earlier poster suggested. We’re taking up space on Nathan’s blog here, so I’ll try to wrap this up. Of course I have noticed that most Brown students are higher on many power gradients than most evangelicals. Of course I know that. It is one of our many common premises in this discussion. I think the main difference between us is that I see queers as the victims of both individual acts of violence and organized, institutional violence (the whole “de jure persecution” thing that you keep ignoring), whereas you somehow see evangelicals as the victims of state persecution. I didn’t know that was your position until now, and I still don’t really understand how you would justify it, but at least I understand your argument better now (I think). So, correct me if I’m wrong: you think that “hate speech” laws curtail the freedom of evangelicals, is that it? Because in a truly free society, they would be free to hate? Really, I’m asking. If that is the case, then I think we just have different definitions of state persecution and we’ll have to settle things there.

By: Joel Dietz

Joel Dietz — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:49:27 +0000

As I believe I clearly stated above, I don’t object to the word ‘despicable’ applied to forms of hateful speech towards homosexuals. My objection was limited to your remark which indicated that although all ‘bashing’ is unacceptable, some bashing is more acceptable than others — diminishing the effect of your first statement. My question was what criterion you use to judge how ‘despicable’ something is (despite my preference for less rhetorically loaded terms, like ‘bad’ ) ? You answered that instead of causality, you believe that speech should be limited based on ‘where you stand’ on ‘power gradients’ and that speech can be more ‘offensive’ when it is directed from someone with higher social status to someone lower.

In the end, it is not clear if your criterion of ‘despicableness’ is based on ‘offensiveness’ or demeaning speech coming from one with superior social position. If the former, then it would be largely context specific and an anti-homosexual statement uttered by herdsmen the mountains of Afganistan, might be less ‘despicable’ than the f-word utterance of a student of Liberty University, who presumably should know better. However, if you mean the latter, has it ever occurred to you that in terms of social opportunity, pedigree, and access to capital resources, graduates of Brown University occupy a much higher position on the global totem pole than their ‘peers’ in the American South? In that case, the primary difference would be that graduates of Brown University advocate for the use of institutionalized action against evangelicals by means of “hate speech” laws (and other acts of State violence), whereas the aforementioned “rednecks” confine themselves to sporadic acts of impulsive, individual violence.

Consequently, I find your argument, to the extent that you have one, flawed.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:24:31 +0000

I’ll grant you that it’s an open question whether hate speech leads to hate crimes, and that no causal link between them can be established in most cases. This doesn’t change the fact that homophobic speech is despicable (I am astonished, frankly, that you object to that word), and that it is despicable partly because we live in a word where queer people are viciously oppressed. They are oppressed by a government that does not grant them equal rights (that’s what “de jure” means) and they are oppressed by groups and individuals who target them for violence. Yes, poor white evangelicals are oppressed in the quasi-Marxist sense that all poor people are oppressed; but not all oppression is equal. And yes, along those lines, I am suggesting that some kinds of “bashing” are worse than other kinds. Not on any causal or behavioral grounds, but on the grounds that there are power gradients everywhere you look, and your speech and behavior should be responsive to where you stand on those gradients. Let’s say we take a time machine to 1930s South Carolina. As we both know, in 1930s South Carolina, blacks are not treated as full citizens. (This is another instance of “de jure persecution.” Are you understanding what I mean by this term now?) Also, thanks to more informal forms of persecution, like lynching and show trials, black people live in a state of fear. Now, we’re sitting on my porch and one of us makes a disparaging joke about “those Yankees,” while the other makes a joke about “those n***ers.” Do you see why one is more offensive than the other? And do you see how that is a product of the society we live in, the displays of power and violence happening all around us, whether we participate in it directly or not?

By: Joel Dietz

Joel Dietz — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:25:05 +0000

If someone arrives at the funeral of a murdered gay man to heap insult upon injury, I would call this despicable. However, even in this egregious instance of hateful speech it is not clear to me that ‘stakes are being raised.’ The act has already been committed. The dead should lie in peace.

As in the above scenario, I am not arguing that some negative speech is not worse than others — I believe that it is — but asking what precisely makes it worse. It seemed to me that Andrew made implicitly an argument from causality — hate speech causes violent acts; this is why speech directed against potential objects is worse than others.

I don’t find this a cogent argument for reasons stated above.