Western nations appear to have fallen out of love with free speech and are criminalizing more and more kinds of speech through the passage of laws banning hate speech, blasphemy and discriminatory language.
The recent exchange between
an atheist and a judge in a small courtroom in rural Pennsylvania could
have come out of a Dickens novel. Magisterial District Judge Mark Martin
was hearing a case in which an irate Muslim stood accused of attacking
an atheist, Ernest Perce, because he was wearing a "Zombie Mohammed" costume on Halloween.
Although the judge had "no doubt that the incident occurred," he
dismissed the charge of criminal harassment against the Muslim and
proceeded to browbeat Perce. Martin explained that such a costume would
have led to Perce's execution in many countries under sharia, or Islamic law, and added that Perce's conduct fell "way outside your bounds of 1st Amendment rights."
The case has caused a national outcry, with many claiming that Martin was applying sharia
law over the Constitution — a baseless and unfair claim. But while the
ruling certainly doesn't suggest that an American caliphate has gained a
foothold in American courts, it was nevertheless part of a disturbing
trend. The conflict in Cumberland County between free speech and
religious rights is being played out in courts around the world, and
free speech is losing.
Perce was marching in a parade with a
fellow atheist dressed as a "Zombie Pope" when he encountered Talaag
Elbayomy, who was outraged by the insult to the prophet. The
confrontation was captured on Perce's cellphone. Nevertheless, Martin
dismissed the charge against Elbayomy. Then he turned to Perce, accusing
him of acting like a "doofus." Martin said: "It's unfortunate that some
people use the 1st Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don't
think that's what our forefathers intended."
For many, the case confirmed long-standing fears that sharia
law is coming to this country. The alarmists note that in January, a
federal court struck down an Oklahoma law that would have barred citing sharia
law in state courts. But there is no threat of that, and certainly not
in Oklahoma, which has fewer than 6,000 Muslims in the entire state.
Rather, the campaign against sharia law has distracted the public from the very real threat to free speech growing throughout the West.
To
put it simply, Western nations appear to have fallen out of love with
free speech and are criminalizing more and more kinds of speech through
the passage of laws banning hate speech, blasphemy and discriminatory
language. Ironically, these laws are defended as fighting for tolerance
and pluralism.
After the lethal riots over Dutch cartoons in 2005
satirizing Muhammad, various Western countries have joined Middle
Eastern countries in charging people with insulting religion. And
prosecutions are now moving beyond anti-religious speech to
anti-homosexual or even anti-historical statements. In Canada last year,
comedian Guy Earle was found to have violated the human rights of a
lesbian couple by making insulting comments at a nightclub. In Britain,
Dale Mcalpine was charged in 2010 with causing "harassment, alarm or
distress" after a gay community police officer overheard him stating
that he viewed homosexuality as a sin. The charges were later dropped.
Western
countries are on a slippery slope where more and more speech is cited
by citizens as insulting and thus criminal. Last year, on the Isle of Wight,
musician Simon Ledger was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated
harassment after a passing person of Chinese descent was offended by
Ledger's singing "Kung Fu Fighting." Although the charges were
eventually dropped, the arrest sends a chilling message that such songs
are voiced at one's own risk.
Some historical debates have now become hate speech. After World War II, Germany criminalized not just Nazi symbols but questioning the Holocaust.
Although many have objected that the laws only force such ignorance and
intolerance underground, the police have continued the quixotic fight
to prevent barred utterances, such as the arrest in 2010 of a man in
Hamburg caught using a Hitler speech as a ring tone.
In January,
the French parliament passed a law making it a crime to question the
Armenian genocide. The law was struck down by the Constitutional
Council, but supporters have vowed to introduce a new law to punish
deniers. When accused of pandering to Armenian voters, the bill's author
responded, "That's democracy."
Perhaps, but it is not liberty.
Most democratic constitutions strive not to allow the majority to simply
dictate conditions and speech for everyone — the very definition of
what the framers of the U.S. Constitution called tyranny of the
majority. It was this tendency that led John Adams to warn: "Democracy … soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.''
Legislators
in the United States have shown the same taste for speech prosecutions.
In June, Tennessee legislators passed a law making it a crime to
"transmit or display an image" online that is likely to "frighten,
intimidate or cause emotional distress" to someone who sees it. The law
leaves free speech dependent not only on the changing attitudes of what
constitutes a disturbing image but whether others believe it was sent
for a "legitimate purpose." This applies even to postings on Facebook or
social media.
Judge Martin's comments are disturbing because they
reflect the same emerging view of the purpose and, more important, the
perils of free speech. Martin told Perce that "our forefathers" did not
intend the 1st Amendment "to piss off other people and cultures."
Putting aside the fact that you could throw a stick on any colonial
corner and hit three people "pissed off" at Thomas Paine
or John Adams, the 1st Amendment was designed to protect unpopular
speech. We do not need a 1st Amendment to protect popular speech.
The
exchange between the judge and the atheist in Mechanicsburg captures
the struggle that has existed between free speech and religion for ages.
What is different is that it is now a struggle being waged on different
terms. Where governments once punished to achieve obedience, they now
punish to achieve tolerance. As free speech recedes in the West, it is
not sharia but silence that is following in its wake.
Jonathan Turley is a professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
Soph:
Soph:
‘It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something
that many find reasonable, but the defense of freedom of speech is more
critical when the message is something that most people find repulsive.’
- ACLU
- ACLU
Related Reading:
No comments:
Post a Comment