Are we true believers in freedom of speech for all?

THE OLYMPIAN | • Published May 06, 2009

Comments (0)

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” – Voltaire.

I am for gay marriage. I do not think it threatens heterosexual marriage. Will straight couples still get married? Will only 50 percent of them stay the course? Will they still have children? How are their marriages threatened by people who happen to be gay being able to marry the people they love? I believe divorce is a far greater threat to marriage. If it’s a right for citizens to marry, we have no business telling them who that should be, within the parameters of sufficient age, willingness and, heaven forfend, species.

Miss California, Carrie Prejean, recently responded to Perez Hilton’s question about her take on gay marriage by saying: “I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman.” Pay careful attention to the first two words of her response: “I believe.” I happen to disagree with her, but, excuse me, isn’t freedom of speech one of the founding tenets of this country?

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, ratified on Dec. 15, 1791, reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…” This would mean Ms. Prejean’s right to speak her mind on this issue, particularly when asked, is as protected as any other citizen of this country. Our reactions have no bearing on her right to say what she thinks.

Lately, we have all been making appropriate ado over our brave soldiers dying for our freedoms. One of the foremost of these is speech. Much of the rest of the world lives under severe restraints, but in this country, we are allowed our opinions and our right to say them.

Like it or not, the only way to safeguard this is to protect the rights of people to express opinions that are complete anathema to us. In a painful landmark case, a Jewish lawyer for the ACLU defended the right of the Nazi Party to march in the town of Skokie, Ill., where many Holocaust survivors made their homes. The judge concurred, saying: “It is better to allow those who preach racial hatred to expend their venom in rhetoric rather than to be panicked into embarking on the dangerous course of permitting the government to decide what its citizens may say and hear.”

Personally, I believe that Ms. Prejean’s opinions are based on religious belief, which the Constitution also wisely separated from government. I believe people of any gender should have the right to a marriage celebrated within a civil framework and let the individual churches decide if they want to perform such marriages or not. I believe this because I believe that civil and religious concepts of marriage are separate. That is my opinion, and just like Ms. Prejean’s, it is mine to have and to express.

If we are truly a nation based on individual freedoms, we must allow people the right to express an opinion – whatever it is. We are, after all, not obligated to stay and hear it.

Maya North, a member of The Olympian’s Board of Contributors, has gone from street kid to bachelor’s degree; welfare mom to computer programmer with the state Department of Labor and Industries. She can be reached at mayanorth@gmail.com,