Simon Meiners on Freedom of Speech, inclusion, and empathy
A lot of discriminatory customs are relics of a time when the lawmakers and the majority didn’t have or seek emotional familiarity with the largely silent suffering of neglected minorities. Discrimination, then, has become entrenched in our culture. This explains why 46% of Mississippi Republicans think interracial marriage should be illegal. When well-read, well-traveled, or emotionally curious
people like myself see what’s up, they often want to stop it. Especially in a democracy, us morally adaptive types have to drag our less cultured, more provincial peers kicking and screaming into these new directions of expanded sympathy – not by force, but by luring them to identify with the victims that they unreflectively hurt and humiliate. Part of this process is marginalizing voices like the Chick-fil-A CEO’s. No serious person is challenging his right to say those things. But all of us who speak out against him do so hoping to marginalize his voice, a voice which furthers what is obviously to us an archaic prejudice clung to by folks who naively regard their own beliefs and practices as a reflection of God’s permanent will rather than a hodgepodge of inherited historical accidents. We don’t want to silence Chick-fil-A. We want to purge their medieval attitudes from the spectrum of civil discourse. That’s not an attack on free speech. White separatists and segregationists don’t get invited on political debate programs because years ago, our society and our media concluded that their ideas were too radically insensitive to be given a mainstream podium. If people of a different religion, sexual orientation, race, et al claim they are suffering in a way that you can’t understand, read a book/article or watch a movie about those people and their experience. Try to feel their suffering. That’s the only way you can make an informed judgment about policies that affect them. Failing to do so is an act of either personal or cultural laziness. Whatever you believe, be watchful of suffering. That includes all of our LGBT brothers and sisters. And read Max Meiners on this. He makes me very proud.
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by Simon T. Meiners
