LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Free Speech for Dr. Laura |
With all the hullabaloo over a few gay activists' demands to cancel Dr. Laura Schlessinger's new TV show, you'd think there's a great threat to free speech afoot. There isn't. Instead, what we have is free speech at work. Thanks to a deal with Paramount, Dr. Laurawho says homosexuality is a "biological error" and counsels "reparative therapy" to cure itwill soon be seen on 160 TV stations reaching 90 percent of American homes. Grant that Dr. Laura's views about homosexuality are odious. Therefore, some activists want Paramount to cancel her show. But if we believe in free speech, should we really demand that she be taken off the air? There are essentially two types of arguments that hold we should not. One is bad, the other better. Both are wrong. Argument No. 1: "Urging Paramount to cancel Dr. Laura's show violates her right to free speech. It's censorship." This style of argumentcommonly aired in debates over bigoted public comments from people like baseball pitcher John Rocker and former football player Reggie Whiteis what results when a solid legal principle becomes pudding. The First Amendment prohibits government from restricting the free flow of ideas. It does not immunize individuals from the consequences of what they say, like being criticized or losing friends, money, or even their jobs. You say what you want and accept the result. There is no guaranteed constitutional right to host a national television program. If Paramount cancels Dr. Laura's TV show, she's free to stand on a soapbox in the middle of Central Park and denounce homosexuals all she wants. I invite her to do so, late one summer evening. Nobody is asking the government to order Dr. Laura off the air. Her legal freedom to speak is not the issue. Argument No. 2: "OK, it's not the law of free speech that's at stake, it's the underlying principle of free speech. We should encourage, not discourage, the expression of diverse viewpoints and robust debate in a democracy because that makes us stronger." This is a better argument. It adopts a common and defensible theory of the function of speech in a free society: There is a "market" for speech in which consumers (citizens) should have wide choice among products (ideas). The maximization of those choices helps ensure the winners will be the best available contenders. There is indeed a market for speech, just as there is a market for food, housing, and entertainment. Except for a few isolated pockets of the worldChina, Cuba, San Franciscomarkets are generally viewed as preferable to the alternatives. In every market, however, consumers pass judgment. They typically do this by deciding whether to buy a given product. They can also express their views on it with varying degrees of intensity, by buying a lot of the product or urging others to do so, for example. If they dislike the product, they can do more than simply refuse to buy itthey can also tell others why they dislike it and even urge them not to waste their money on it. Those who embrace Argument No. 2 agree that we citizens, like consumers, should be able to pass judgment on Dr. Laura's product. No one says the free speech principle means we must watch ("buy") Dr. Laura's show. Turning up the heat, practically everyone concedes we are justified under the free speech principle to criticize her harshlyeven to ridicule herfor what she says. But they say the next step, explicitly lobbying Paramount to take her off the air, is beyond the pale. The argument, then, is entirely over the level of intensity that citizens in a democracy should use in opposition to ideas they loathe. It's clear, even under the rationale of Argument No. 2, that we can so publicly berate Dr. Laura that she will lose the respect of her bosses at Paramount, then lose viewers, and then be taken off the air. But we can't explicitly say we want that result. In other words, under Argument No. 2, we may urge indirectly what we may not urge directly. That's a thin line to defend. What Argument No. 2 also says is this: Dr. Laura is free to express her views at any degree of intensity she likes and that's good for us, even if her ideas are odious, because we need diverse views, etc. But, at the same time, those who oppose her intense views must restrain the intensity of their opposition because that's bad for us. What happened to diversity and robust debate? In the battle of ideas, it seems, one side may go nuclear and the other must stay conventional. A truly free market of ideas reflects not only the number of citizens who hold a particular view but also the intensity with which they hold it. This includes the intense view that gays should be "repaired" and the opposite intense view that those who say such things shouldn't be given a platform to say them to a potential audience of 230 million people. For decades, Dr. Laura and her ilk successfully argued that positive portrayals of gay people should be kept off the air. They succeeded because the speech market at the time supported their demands. Now that the culture has shifted and it's her turn to face a hostile market, Dr. Laura wants free speech. Let her have it. Dale Carpenter, an attorney, is the winner of three Vice Versa awards for excellence in gay writing. He can be reached at OutRight@aol.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 3, Apr. 7, 2000. |