The republican club at my alma mater brought this dude to campus yesterday to deliver a speech called "the born gay hoax." Apparently his thesis is that people choose to be gay, it isn't natural, and gay people are out recruiting our impressionable youth. Totall bullshit.
So last night when he came, a ton of students showed up (more than could fit in the room he was scheduled to speak in) and started chanting really loudly and banging on pots and pans. He left halfway through his speech and didn't come back. Now there's some controversy over whether protesting him was appropriate.
A couple thoughts:
I'm not sure if it was appropriate, but I'm kind of proud it happened. It probably was immature, but you're supposed to be immature in college. Never again in your life will you be free to act out as much. Take advantage!
Also, the "this isn't how mature adults behave" argument reminds me a lot of the "this isn't how nice girls should act" line that women have been fed forever. Yeah, it's not how mature people act in polite society, but maybe they should! In general, women don't speak up enough because they're too worried about appearing nice. Good for the protestors for stepping outside the constraints of normal social mores for an evening.
Finally, liberalism does not equal absolute moral relativism. It's true that we make a lot of relativistic arguments. Think of: "just because your church says abortion is wrong, doesn't mean the rest of us think so." or "just because you think homosexuality is a sin doesn't mean the rest of us do!" However, that relativism is not complete, and no matter how fervently asshole republicans want to do so, you can't take it to its logical extreme. I think in general, we should err on the side of being more open-minded, not less, but when someone's opinion is basically lies (whether the lie is "gay people choose to be gay" or "intelligent design is a real scientific theory") we don't have to take it seriously. Not all opinions are worthy of respect. Some are just illogical and stupid.
3 comments:
Uh, I'm about as absolutely pro choice as they come, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the notion that "you should tolerate this stupid, false opinion" constitutes a more "extreme" form of relativism than "you should tolerate this commonplace action that you believe is tantamount to murder."
By the way, apparently video of this made Feministing. iiiinteresting. SS,DD.
I don't think the way it was protested was necessarily the best choice, but at the same time I can't believe that any Smith student would have invited someone to do a talk on that subject. (Plus, I'd choose a seemingly immature/inappropriate protest over none at all... I can't believe that talk took place.)
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