self-censorship

A friend just today regaled me with a story that exemplifies a current running through our country today. He is in his last year of college at a private Christian school. He received through campus email a message with the subject "Are You a Hetero-sexist?" The email had a link that lead the viewer to a quiz concerning his beliefs on homosexuality. My friend, a very conservative Christian, scored high on the quiz, placing in the "homophobe" category. He was also raised with the idea, and he maintains as an adult, that homosexuality is a sin. He took issue with the quiz's judgment that not agreeing with homosexuality is the same thing as homophobia and discrimination and hate crimes. I took the quiz myself, scored a 45. Most of the points I accrued were from answers like "I never considered that before." I suppose that would be a personal failing, not wondering if everyone around me is gay. But it's not politically correct to ask people their sexual orientation, or to say that it is wrong, from a religious view.

I recently heard a speech given by Charleton Heston on the Radio Free Liberty podcast. Speaking at Harvard Law School in 1999, Mr. Heston said,

"If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism."

It's not only the topic of homosexuality. I will admit that I was unaware that my godmother was mixed-race until a few months ago. I've known her since I was in junior high, and only this year did I know she was African, French and Creole. Before then I just saw her as the beautiful woman who was my godmother; the only thing that's changed is now I know her heritage. Sometimes I feel as though I can't talk about certain things or complain about others because I am three generations away from British citizens.

It's much easier to stay quiet, to assume that someone else will speak up if conditions get bad enough. Like the story of Kitty Genovese, whose murder was heard by about a dozen of her neighbors, but none thought to call the police or come to her aid, we rely on the next person to do something. The people my age are distinctly quiet in this generation, content to stick ear buds in their ears and listen to their iPods instead of taking up the cause, any cause. Even the horrific thought of Vietnam's history repeating itself in Iraq has barely spurred any activism in colleges, at least not compared to the 60s. Many activists this time around are leftovers from the last time, while my peers sit eerily silent. Maybe they're afraid to speak up. After all, in today's society, citizens who are anti-war are harshly admonished for being unpatriotic and not supporting the soldiers who are dying on foreign soil. But who thinks to ask why those men and women are dying?

Our U.S. Constitution still gives us the freedom of speech, though it's been carved away in pieces. We still need to be asking questions, making statements, even at the cost of uncomfortable silences, or social ostracism. The Sedition Act expired in 1801, and even though the Patriot Act has resurrected some of its ideas, we still enjoy a relative freedom to express ourselves. We need to exercise that freedom while we still can.

The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong. – Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 1925