When is Curtailing Freedom the Mature and Wise Choice?
.... Uh, never. Except of course at Colorado College, according to Amanda Udis-Kessler, Colorado College's Director of Institutional Research and Planning:
Social inequality is deeply grounded in a lack of respect-for women,
people of color, lesbian and gay people, and others. When we choose to
curtail our freedom to disrespect others in order to build a meaningful
society, we have made a mature and wise choice-and one that college
should help us learn.
The rest of the post is a roundup of the fallout over the punishment by the university of a parody of a campus feminist publication. Basically, the argument boils down to the feminists feeling "dissed" and arguing that being dissed is a sufficient reason to curtail speech if one is in a protected group. But remember this plea by the Colorado College feminists:
But please stop fabricating a story about humorless, offended feminists silencing men's free speech.
Oh, okay.
There are enough cases of this new theory of speech running around, that speech may be curtailed if someone in a protected group feels hurt or challenged by the speech, for real concern. It is the same theory at the heart of the kerfuffle in Canada over the human rights commission's attack on conservative magazines and bloggers, and the same theory in the recent New Mexico decision that a photographer cannot choose not to photograph gay marriages.
