Thursday 19 April 2018
The first headline that attracted my attention yesterday was “Greg Hunt interview goes off rails over ‘free speech’ and gay conversion therapy.”
Now I was well aware that the conservative fight against homosexuality didn’t end with the success of the marriage equality legislation. Plus I was also aware of the “gay conversion therapy” that the Liberal Party was trying to foolishly promote.
What aroused my curiosity though was the “free speech” angle. Apparently in an interview in which he defended Victorian Liberal members’ plans to debate gay conversion therapy at the next state conference the Health Minister, Greg Hunt told Radio National presenter Patricia Karvelas he “does not support gay conversion therapy” but when asked if he was concerned about the motion his lips remained sealed.
“Look, it’s not something I support, it’s not federal government policy, it’s not going to be federal government policy and we’re not about to change our position on that.”
“The health minister added “people are entitled to have different views, views that I disagree with”.
“What I do worry about is this constant view that nobody is anywhere allowed to have a different view. As a journalist, I would hope you would believe in freedom of speech.”
It was then that (to use the language of my childhood) that a donnybrook developed and Hunt began to question the journalist Patricia Karvelas about her attitude to free speech.
When she said she believed in it he continued to attack her demanding she outline her concept of what it was.
Anyway, there are a few things to be noted here. One is the fact that the Conservatives intend to continue their fight against legalised homosexuality. Even if young gays commit suicide when being treated with this crazy therapy. Two, you don’t require any extension of free speech to make your point in this instance. Three, it was probably just a ploy to appease the growing far right of the Liberal Party and four, it is also a message to the members that an extension of free speech is still on the books.
Hunt would know that our Constitution does not guarantee free speech. It only implies that we have it. That being said, we assume that anyone has a right to express a view. There are some, like Andrew Bolt, who despite us supposedly living in an enlightened society want to enshrine in law the right to hate each other.
Free speech to people of a far right ilk assumes that you can say anything you like to anyone regardless of the consequences. I have always contended that it should. I am happy with the way things are I don’t need anymore flexibility in the law to be able to use the language of hate.
Let me make it absolutely clear: I abhor racism with all the intellectual and moral righteousness that has been bequeathed to me by good people. Something unexplainable within me has its way when I am confronted by nefariousness and I speak out.
I come from the viewpoint that if as a society we are advancing intellectually, that we become more enlightened as one year meanders into the next then we shouldn’t need legislation to make it lawful to hate one another and put it in writing. If we are becoming more enlightened then the thought shouldn’t even enter our heads.
From another of my posts
Surely this is not what an enlightened society means by free speech? Does it demonstrate our cognitive advancement? Is this what well-educated men and women want as free speech. Do we see free speech as being nothing more or nothing less than the right to tell the truth in whatever form we so choose.
One has to wonder why the so-called defenders of free speech feel they are inhibited by what they have now. I don’t. I have never felt constrained in my thoughts or my ability to express them. I’m doing it now. But then I don’t feel a need to go beyond my own moral values of what is decent to illuminate my thoughts.
Why is it then that the likes of Abbott, Bolt, Jones, Brandis, Bernardi and others need to go beyond common decency, and defend others who cannot express themselves without degenerating into hate speech? The answer has nothing to do with an honourably noble sort of democratic free speech. What is it they want to say that they cannot say now?
Why does this demand for open slather free speech always come from the right of politics and society? They seem to have an insensitivity to common decency that goes beyond any thoughtful examination.
They simply want the right to inflict hate, defame with impunity, insult, and promote bigotry if it suits their purpose. And behind that purpose can be found two words. Power and control.
The way we presently view free speech simply perpetuates the right to express all those things that make us lessor than what we should be.
Debate, in whatever form, should not include the right to vilify. It is not of necessity about winning or taking down ones opponent. It is about an exchange of facts ideas and principles.
Or in its purest form it is simply about the art of persuasion. The argument that bigots are entitled to be bigots or that unencumbered free speech exposes people for what they are, doesn’t wear with me. It simply says that society has not advanced. That our cultural ethical intellect has not progressed at the same rate as our technological understanding.
The fact that so many people agree with the free speech argument highlights the tolerance we have for the unacceptable right to hate each other, which to me is the sauce of everything that is wrong with human behaviour.
And we want to make it acceptable by legislating to condone it
Are we really saying that in a supposed enlightened society that we should value, love, decorum, moderation, truth, fact, balance, reason, tolerance, civility and respect for the others point of view. That we need to enshrine in law a person’s right to be the opposite of all these things.
If that is the case then we are not educating. We are not creating a better social order and we are not teaching enlightenment at all. The fact is that free speech in any democratic system should be so valued, so profoundly salient, that any decent enlightened government should legislate to see that it is not abused. That it carries with it sacrosanct principles of decency that are beyond law and ingrained in the conscious of a collective common good.
After all the dignity of the individual (or individuals) within the collective is more important than some fools right to use freedom of speech to vilify another.
My thought for the day
“An enlightened society is one in which the suggestion that we need to legislate ones right to hate another person is considered intellectually barren.”
