December 17, 2004
Student protesters
By Nathan Nance
Guest post by Nate Nance
I mentioned a protest at Waco High School against a religious group handing out pamphlets "educating" teenagers about the evils of abortion and homosexuality. As luck would have it, one of the girls who writes for Teen Trib goes to Waco High. She has a column on how important she thinks free speech is and I thought we might all enjoy reading it.
Freedom of speech is very important. I can't think of a right I take advantage of more often in expressing my opinions on a variety of things. It might be just because I was raised in an era of political correctness that I think that the church group was over the line. I don't see how passing out literature full of misinformation is a good thing. I agree that they have a right to believe whatever they want and get together to tak about what they believe. I don't see how anyone has the right to just lie about something and to get together in a coordinated way to lie en masse.
I'm very torn between my own beliefs in the free flow of ideas making the world a better place and people like this who are only using our cherished rights to try to make people hate or discriminate. I guess I just have to have faith that democracy will keep on working as it has for over 200 years and that small fringe groups can't really hold any real power for very long.
This is a guest post from Nathan Nance. Nate is a sports/news clerk at the Waco Tribune-Herald and writer/editor of Common Sense a Texas-based Democratic Web log. He can be reached at nate_nance@yahoo.com
Posted by Nathan Nance at December 17, 2004 08:35 PM
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They have a right to protest and others have a right to counter-protest.
...but the first group is still stupid.
Free speech always must include the unpopular speech as well as popular. Otherwise the right is absolutely meaningless.
You have the right to speak out on your beliefs. I have the right to call you a brain-dead moron if I so choose.
I agree with the principle here. I'm all for protecting unpopular speech because it keeps democracy lean and mean. The free flow of ideas is vital for our country to continue.
My point is simply that the kinds of ideas being posed here are the kind that are the antithesis of what we stand for as a country.
Besides, the thing that really scares me is that the ideas espoused by this particular religious group, homosexuality is a sin and gay people must get counseling and abortions mean automatic tickets to Hell, aren't really that unpopular. Or at least it would seem that is the popular trend.
