An Icon of Freedom of Speech

It’s no wonder so many websites attack atheism, and why an increasing number of newspapers seems to be doing the same thing; we’re probably one of the easiest targets out there. We’re a minority group in most countries in the world, but not only that, we are actively challenging the view of the majority group. In comparative terms, we’re like the British National Party (BNP) in the UK elections. The BNP are a fascist, right-wing, white supremacist political movement which has gathered together the last surviving members of Britain’s racists. They are a small minority, yet they are often one of the loudest; campaigning against every single other party, blaming them for the current state of the government. Unlike other targets that one could attack such as those of a certain race or sex, we don’t have any anti-discrimination laws to protect us, and for very good reasons, we have campaigned against such laws (the ones that would protect us) under the banner of freedom of speech. We don’t want our governments saying that people cannot write hateful things about us, because the whole point about the atheism debate is that there can be a debate.

Freedom of speech is often attacked by the religious, who claim that atheists use it to blaspheme and campaign against their beliefs, even though they are fine when they do the same to us. The point of freedom of speech is that anyone can say anything about politics, religion, art, etc and have their view protected so that others can hear it. The people who agree will state their approval, and the people who disagree or find it offensive in any way can have their say as well, and their response will likewise be protected.

It is this freedom of speech that I execute when I respond to the newspaper articles which lie and misrepresent us. I don’t want the articles to be censored, but I want my right to a fair response. The execution of this right was most recently seen when a Op-Ed piece, penned by Charlotte Allen was published in the LA Times (and then republished yesterday in the Guardian) and spread around the blogosphere. I doubt very many atheists would have wanted Allen’s piece obliterated from the newspaper (shame on you if you did), but the sheer amount of responses it generated from both sides of the debate show the level of disagreement. If you want to read a thorough, well-written objection to Allen’s article, then head over to Shane Croucher’s blog.

I’m sure Allen will put this response down to “whining” as she did in the article and won’t even realize the hypocrisy of her writing, which one could argue is a lot of whining about atheists. I’m sure she’ll continue to criticize us for using freedom of speech to attack religion or belief in god, whilst at the same time using the very same freedom of speech to attack our views. Hers is the one-sided argument; she wants nothing but her views to be made, and she will ignore all objections or file them under the title of “whining”. We’ve seen this kind of behaviour before in so many forms, and if one thing holds true in each of those cases, it is that in the long run, people like Charlotte Allen always lose out eventually.

Opinions will be heard, debate will be had. Long live freedom of speech.

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If there is anything to be said of the UK government’s actions on free speech this week, it is that they are consistent. First, they ban Geert Wilders, an elected politician in the Netherlands from entering the UK to show his film to the House of Lords (an event he was invited to I might add). Geert Wilders’ movie “Fitna” portrays the Qur’an as a book filled with hate, and argues that the teachings within it have encouraged followers to commit terrorism and violence towards women. All of his accusations are accurate. The Qur’an has many examples of both intolerance and violence in its pages, and this needs to be brought to attention of politicians if they are going to start making laws against “discrimination” of religions.

Secondly, the UK government announced today that the Westboro Baptist Church were banned from the UK. The group, known for protesting the funerals of dead soldiers and pro-gay events, had planned on coming to the UK to protest a play that was being performed. The play was about the torture and murder of a gay American student, and has been the target of the church before in the US. I wrote a blog post yesterday that argued for the right of the WBC to picket the event, on the ground of free speech. They weren’t telling people to go out and kill gay people (as Muslim clerics often preach) but instead they were preaching what the Bible says, that homosexuality is an “abomination”.

This is what angers me the most. That it is somehow “ok” to pick and choose what freedom of speech entails; that just because large amounts of Muslims believe that killing non-believers is a divine right, to reject that view and argue against it is a violation of religious freedom; that fringe groups wanting to express ideas cannot express them if they might somehow upset the status quo. Sure, what the WBC preach is hatred, but the fact that we recognise it as hatred is evidence enough that people are going to reject it and counter it with their own opinions. Banning such opinions isn’t going to make them go away, and I suspect that the “prohibition” effect will simply make their words louder and heard more often.

Freedom of speech has limits, it has to in order for it to work. The point is though, that any limits need to be kept to a minimum, and it can usually be kept to just one, namely, any speech that incites people to commit crimes. You can say you dislike  someone, or that you hate them for whatever reason, but as soon as you encourage people to harm them, or kill them, or commit crimes against them, you are stepping out of the boundaries of freedom of speech. It is for these reasons that I do not support banning the Bible or the Qur’an for their content, but rather make sure that the content can be critised in every medium available, and why I support the right of the WBC to say what they do about homosexuals, atheists, muslims, etc. As long as I have my right to say what I think in return, then we have no problems. It is when you suppress freedom of speech, as the UK government has done in the cases of Geert Wilders and the WBC, that the entire system becomes worthless. We might as well not have freedom of speech in this country if our government can decide what is and what is not acceptable on the fly as it appears they currently think they can do.

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