Author: Ophelia Benson

This again. I seem to have this argument every ten days or so. The issues are just never framed properly – instead they’re framed evasively and euphemistically, and how can anything be discussed properly when the air is clouded by evasion and euphemism? I ask you.

What argument? The free speech one. The one that swirls around the thought that free speech is not about the easy cases but about the hard ones. One version of that is the discussion of hypocrisy and double standards, as in Mark Steyn’s inaccurate whinge about Hampstead big guns who ‘lined up’ to defend Rushdie but wouldn’t (according to Steyn) line up to defend Lynette Burrows, and as in this one about Orhan Pamuk and David Irving. Why are people making free speech noises about Pamuk and not about Irving?

Two European writers have recently fallen foul of European governments for expressing their views about genocide. Both are threatened with trial and imprisonment for something they said or wrote. Yet one is supported by EU politicians and the international literati – who have rallied around to defend him from censorship and to champion the right of writers to speak freely – while the other has been ignored, or even told that he got what he deserved.

Yes. That’s true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. It leaves a great deal out. It oversimplifies – drastically. The two writers didn’t say or write the same thing, about the same subject, in discussing the same genocide, with the same implications. That paragraph tries to make it look as if they did, but they didn’t. Just saying ‘for expressing their views about genocide’ and ‘for something they said or wrote’ is not good enough. You might as well say both Martin Luther King and Timothy McVeigh went to jail for protesting against the government. You might as well say that both Osama bin Laden and Irshad Manji are controversial. Both are true statements, but incomplete – to put it mildly.

This is bad news, because when it comes to free speech it’s all or nothing: we either have it or we don’t. And if we were to have free speech for one writer but not for another, then we wouldn’t have free speech at all.

Is that true? It seems to me to be quite untrue. It seems to me to be a rather stupid oversimplification, and unargued besides. Why is free speech all or nothing? Why do we either have it or not? Why can’t we have it in some things and not in others? As in fact we already do – for good or ill, or both. And why do we not have free speech at all if we have it for one writer but not another? What if one writer’s entire output consists of exhortations to murder certain groups of people? If that writer does not have free speech, does it follow that none of us do? I don’t offhand see why.

Brendan O’Neill does finally get around to saying that the two writers ‘could not be more different’. But then –

Yet their cases are the same: both could be incarcerated, not for physically harming another person or for damaging property, but for the words they spoke; both could have their liberty removed because they expressed views that the authorities – in Turkey and Austria – decree to be distasteful.

But that is not the point. That just evades the real point, which is much less easy to deal with. And that’s what is so irritating – free speech absolutists are so predictably apt to do that: to evade the real difficulties in their position by resorting to adjectives like ‘distasteful’ – or controversial, offensive, shocking, objectionable, or the like. As if the only issue were emotional reactions. But that is not the only issue, and it’s very dishonest to shove the real issue behind the sofa and hope no one will notice. Austria doesn’t make Holocaust denial illegal merely because it is ‘distasteful’ but because, rightly or wrongly, they think it is dangerous. Obviously there is plenty of room for argument on that: it’s an empirical question as well as a question of principle, and there’s a lot to say. But that is the issue, not anything so silly and trivial as distaste.

A tag by Norm. Sevens.

Seven things to do before I die:

1) Go to Italy. 2) Write a book. 3) Participate in electing a rational, non-corrupt, thoughtful, educated, articulate, disciplined adult as president of the US. 4) Refrain from running a marathon. 5) Convert the pope to atheism. 6) Read all those books I should have read by now and haven’t. 7) See women achieve full and ineradicable human rights and equality everywhere on the planet.

Seven things I cannot do:

1) Play the cello. 2) Rock-climb. 3) Let it go. 4) Chinese calligraphy. 5) Help it. 6) Fly. 7) Keep things tidy.

Seven things that attract me to blogging:

1) It’s like writing in a notebook except that people read it. 2) The rate of injury is lower than in rock-climbing. 3) It’s international. 4) It’s much less fatiguing than running a marathon. 5) It’s a way to get attention for things I think should get attention. 6) Blogging is a form of essay-writing, and I think essays are an undervalued medium. 7) It’s a good way to irritate people who hate blogs.

Seven things I say often:

1) You just can’t get it right, can you Basil. 2) She only does it to annoy, because she knows it teases. 3) Well they would, wouldn’t they. 4) Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream? 5) That’s not what I said. 6) Hang up. 7) No.

Seven books (or series) that I love:

1) Hamlet 2) Lucky Jim 3) King Lear 4) Emma 5) Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass 6) Memories of a Catholic Girlhood 7) Wuthering Heights

Seven movies I watch over and over again:

Actually I don’t, but I can come up with a few that I would if I did, I think…1) Dr Strangelove. 2) The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner. 3) Bringing Up Baby. 4) Lone Star. 5) Little Dorritt. That’s about it – and I’m not sure I would watch them over and over; I think there’s a limit. I used to be able to do that but now I get bored quickly.

I’m skipping the last one, because I’m too shy.

What was that we were saying about theocracy?

More than half the secondary schools in Wales inspected in the past four years break the law by failing to pray every day, a BBC survey has revealed. All state schools should hold an act of worship each day, either for all pupils in assembly or as a class-based prayer…The 1944 Education Act promised lessons for children up to the age of 15, created grammar, technical and secondary modern schools – and also placed worship at the heart of school life. The 1988 Education Reform Act strengthened the legislation, further defining worship in schools as wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.

Well there’s liberty of thought for you. There’s being treated like potential future rational autonomous beings. There’s education. There’s respect for reason and science and probabilities.

There’s an odd illustration on the page – of a looming crucifix with light from church windows flooding in on it. It’s no doubt meant to look inspiring, or something, but in the context it looks far more threatening than inspiring. It looks like a bloody great bludgeon, is what it looks like.

But Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan said instead of changing the law, schools should have more support to enable them to provide worship.

Provide. Provide. Do you mark that. Man I get tired of religious tyrants resorting to pious sanctimonious self-flattering euphemisms for what they’re doing. They’re not providing worship, they’re forcing it on people. Say what you mean, you archepiscopal bastard. Since it’s not optional, ‘provide’ is the wrong word. Tying someone down and stuffing cheeseburgers down her throat is not ‘providing’ lunch, is it.

It’s not just the hard religious sell in acts of worship, it’s asking questions about the meaning of life. It’s asking questions about what it means to live in a society where you respect others. Now all those, it seems to me, are religious virtues – tolerance, forgiveness, compassion.

Oh really – those are religious virtues, are they. Living in a society where you respect others, tolerance, forgiveness, compassion. Why? Why does it ‘seem to you’ that those are ‘religious virtues’? What reason can you possibly offer for such a stupid idea? Do you seriously think that atheists universally have no truck with such virtues? Or that all religious people are saturated with them? (Talk to the ‘Rapture’ crowd and then explain to us how full of forgiveness, compassion, tolerance and respect for others they are. I can’t wait.)

It would be idiotic to leave out faith in God in a school when that’s part of our society and when it’s part of the Christian foundation of this country

No it wouldn’t. For one thing, lots of things are part of your society that are left out in school. Same for things that are ‘part of the Christian foundation of this country’. And for another thing, ‘faith in God’ can be part of your society and part of the Christian foundation of your country and still be entirely mistaken. School is primarily for education, and it’s not educational to force people to ‘worship’ an entity that there is no evidence for. It’s no more educational to force people to ‘worship’ a deity than it would be to force them to ‘worship’ Cinderella or Elmer Fudd or Zeus.

In a statement on Friday, Welsh Education Minister, Jane Davidson, said she expected “all schools to meet their obligations under the law”. She added: “All registered pupils attending a maintained school should take part in collective worship and it is the head teacher’s duty to secure this. The systems are in place to identify any shortcomings and to ensure that the appropriate action is taken.”

And that’s that.