I recently blogged about some legislation that would open the door to what would be in effect a thought police - that anyone in any self-described group could prosecute anyone else for a 'hate crime' based on that person's thoughts. I was thinking this would happen sometime down the road, but I was wrong. Here are two stories of the first steps in this direction RIGHT NOW. These should send up red flags, sound warning bells, and concern you a very, very great deal.
The first is a Washington Post article from a couple days ago about the Maryland State Board of Education's ruling on a sex-education curriculum. The short version is that the Board has rejected all legal challenges for a sex-education curriculum that fully promotes the homosexual lifestyle despite the objections of many of the parents. The opponents of the bill maintained the curriculum violates their free speech rights and rights to freedom of religion by only promoting the one viewpoint on the subject, but the Board still rejected over a dozen claims of constitutional violations. Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story is the official statement from the Board that said although a parent does have a right to control the upbringing of a child, "that right is not absolute. It must bend to the State's duty to educate its citizens."
The second story is by George Will in the Jewish World Review from a couple weeks ago. The city of Oakland, California has deemed the following statement to 'constitute something akin to hate speech':
Marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values.
The ultra-liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Will points out that "overturning the 9th Circuit is steady work for the U.S. Supreme Court", so the hope is that the 9th's ruling will be overturned soon, but even if it is the attempt itself should cause much concern. Will goes on to describe the situation where a group supporting religious and family values was prevented from circulating a flier after other employees' groups had circulated similar fliers advocating 'Happy Coming Out Day' and other gay rights issues.
Now, I realize both of these stories are in relation to homosexuality. As I did in my previous blog on the topic, let me be clear: I don't want to start a debate about the moral rights or wrongs of homosexuality. I want to look at the overarching legal concept at play here. Just because this is happening with homosexuality today doesn't mean it will stop there; once this door is open, these legal challenges will crop up on literally any and every topic. Another example of this is smoking.
Personally, I don't like it. I won't ever do it, and I don't particularly like experiencing it when someone else is doing it. I don't especially like restaurants that have smoking sections. But, I will defend the freedom of people to light up while on private property (including restaurants). It's exactly the same principle - government cannot and should not attempt to control the freedoms of Americans (in this case, what happens on private property) unless a crime is being committed. Since smoking is legal for those who are 18 or older, it should be allowed on private property. [A side note here: for those of you who are thinking that second-hand smoke causes health risks, take a good hard look. For every study showing those risks, there is another that debunks them. I look at it this way: if second-hand smoke was truly that deadly, the whole thing should be outlawed; since that hasn't happened, there must not be enough conclusive evidence one way or the other. I could be wrong; I have not studied the issue in depth myself, so take my thoughts here with a grain of salt. But, practically speaking, if smoking bothers me that much, I simply won't go to a restaurant that allows it. If enough people stop patronizing a place that allows smoking, the business will either close down or voluntarily bar smoking without any government involvement. That's the beauty of capitalism.] By enacting smoking bans, the government is attempting to control individual behaviors of people, and that's just one step shy of controlling individual thoughts. The bans on transfats and foi gras are other examples that are already in progress. Do you see now how rapidly this problem will expand?
Both of these stories, however, show a clear objective on the part of government to control the thoughts of the American public. And let me ask you: are we really at a point where a simple statement about marriage being the foundation of family values (which, by the way, can be substantiated by statistical analysis) has become provocative hate speech?
These efforts fly directly in the face of religious freedom and freedom of speech, both of which are absolutely critical pieces of the U.S. Constitution and the American way of life. If you take away those two freedoms, America ceases to be what it was founded as, what it was meant to be, and what it has always been. The most disturbing thing here is that these efforts contradict those fundamental rights simply to prevent the discussion of a different viewpoint. That, my friends, is blatant censorship, and we can look to history to see who relied on censorship and thought police: Stalin, Hitler, and Hussein, just to name a few. Do we really want to go there? Do we really want George Orwell's 'Big Brother' to become reality in America? The Maryland Board's statement that a parent's right to raise their own children should be secondary to what the government wants sure sounds like we're already there!
As I stated before, the door must be completely shut on any and all attempts to control the thoughts of people. It is a Pandora's Box, a disaster waiting to happen. If you think this is something that can't possibly occur in America, you need to realize that it is already happening...before you're not allowed to think about it at all.
There's my two cents.
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