The First Amendment of the Constitution provides every
American with freedom o f speech.
The freedom has been tried and tested many times, sometimes in favor of
the individual, sometimes in the favor of the government. Americans are free, for the most part,
to criticize their government, like Rush Limbaugh, without a fear of being
dragged into the gulag. Americans
are free, for the most, to speak in a lewd manner, like Howard Stern, without
fear of penalty (that might even attract more listeners).
Despite the freedom, legally, to speak our minds we are not
free from the court of public opinion.
The recent comments by Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-Fil-A restaurants
have created an outpouring of anti-Chick-Fil-A comments, sponsorship rejections
and even a same-sex kiss-in in August to protest Mr. Cathy’s comments. For what? Because he said they support heterosexual marriages? GASP! That hate monger!
This all started last year when an LGBT (that’s lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender for those of you who have not attended a repeal
of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” training session) group accused Chick-Fil-A of
donating more than $3million to Christian groups who support traditional
marriage. In an interview which
was printed 18 July, Mr. Cathy said that the company was “guilty as
charged”. They indeed do support the
idea that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. And he and his company have been tried,
convicted and sentenced in the court of public opinion.
So severe is the sentence that the Boston mayor said he
would block future Chik-Fil-As from being started in the Boston area. Jim Henson and the Muppets, once
affliate of Chik-Fil-A has since pulled their affiliation.
The fact that Mr. Cathy is being halted from building restaurants
or shunned by celebrities is proof that we are being held hostage. We are being held hostage with language
not guns. Dan Cathy did not use
hateful rhetoric or mean-spirited language like the idiots from West Borough
Baptist Church; he simply and politely stated that he used his money to support
a cause he believed in. The fact
that he is being lambasted in the media and demonized as a hatemonger should
serve as a wake-up call for everyone in America.
We have truly come to a place in our society where if you do
not subscribe to a certain belief that you are ostracized or labeled as hateful
or labeled as ignorant. It’s not
just with the issue to sexual preference, but global warming and abortion carry
the same sentence for those who might oppose. Recently the Susan G. Komen foundation (the foundation
responsible for Race for the Cure) recently found itself in the same predicament
when the Chairwoman decided to pull funding from Planned Parenthood. They faced such a backlash that they
reversed their stance and continue to give money to an organization responsible
for the deaths of millions.
How could this happen?
How can a non-profit organization and privately held company be bullied
into making apologies for an ideological position? There was nothing hateful in their speech. Mr. Cathy didn’t say “I hate all of the
gay people in the whole world” or the Susan G. Komen foundation didn’t say “All
women who get abortions need to go to hell.”
It has happened because there has been an ideological shift
in our society which has taken control of our language. The exact time the shift happened
really can’t be pinpointed to a certain day or year. Maybe it was when as a society we stopped believing in
absolute truth. At some point the Enlightenment
Era, which was steeped in the assumption that science, art, literature etc.
searched for or believed in an absolute truth. Our Declaration of Independence was formed during the
Enlightenment Era and it states “we hold these truths to be self-evident that
all men are created equal…”
But the Enlightenment Era gave way to the Modern Era where
people began to reject the certainty of a Creator. Science, art, and literature no longer had that foundation
to begin with, but a foundation of humanism, which is to say that humans are
the center of the world and human pursuit should be above all. Humanism rejects
anything supernatural and replaces it with human reasoning and the idea of
human nature is essentially “good.”
This line of thinking is what has led us into the Post
Modern Era which further separates us from absolute truth. Postmodernism rejects any objective way
to explaining reality. So in the
post-modern world if a person says they believe the sky to be purple, well,
it’s purple. Even if scientific evidence
supports the sky being blue, the sky is purple in their mind and in their mind
they are right.
It is from this line of thinking that our language has been
hijacked and anyone who does not subscribe to the postmodern thought process is
held hostage. Postmodernism is
responsible for the politically correct world we live in. No longer can Dan Cathy (or anyone like
him) state that he doesn’t support gay marriage. He can’t say this because he is telling people he believes
in a standard and that anything that deviates from that standard is wrong.
But if Dan Cathy says that gay marriage is wrong he is
demonized, he is tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty of being
hateful. The scary thing is that
in Canada’s hate speech law sexual orientation is included in the protected
classes of people. Please don’t
misunderstand me, I’m not advocating for gay-bashing or saying cruel
things. This is scary because a
person, let’s say, oh, a pastor perhaps, gives a sermon on Romans 1 and says
that homosexuality is wrong. That
pastor can then put into jail. For
what? For nothing more than his
beliefs.
Well, L. Kyle that’s Canada, this is America that would
never happen here.
If Boston and Chicago are successful at blocking the
building of a restaurant because the CEO doesn’t support gay marriage, I would say that we are not far off.
Leftovers enjoy!
L. Kyle
