According to U.S. intelligence, the government of North Korea was behind a cyberattack on Sony Corporation designed to keep an American movie from being released. The cyberattack was followed by threats of violence against anyone connected with the movie, including, apparently, theater owners and patrons. The movie was a comedy depicting the plight of a couple of characters caught up in a plot to assassinate the North Korean president. Sony later took the threats seriously, at first announcing that the movie would remain unreleased, though later deciding to distribute the film after all.
The next-week’s headlines announced an even graver threat to free speech: a bloody attack by radical Muslims on a publishing group in Paris. Twelve people working for the publication Charlie Hebdo were gunned down. Their crime? Publishing cartoons that were disrespectful of Muhammad.
Americans, famously passionate about free speech, decried these threats and attacks. As thousands of Parisians proclaimed “Je Suis Charlie,” I am Charlie, and marched through the streets of their city, the American ambassador marched with them. An editorial cartoon depicted the twin towers of the World Trade Center as enormous pencils rising into the sky, a black plane heading in their direction.
But while all this was going on there was little note taken of an attempt by a gay rights group to keep a television network from showing a program titled, “My Husband is Not Gay.” Press releases described the program as a “reality” show following the lives of several married Utah couples. In each case the husband claimed same-sex attraction, but rather than act on those impulses had chosen instead to marry a woman and form a conventional family: husband, wife, children.
The program should be suppressed, the protestors insisted, because it sent the wrong message. The idea that homosexual behavior was a choice, and that heterosexual marriage was a better choice, would damage young gay people struggling for acceptance.
The claim lies outside the purpose of this essay. At the center of the essay is the reminder that free speech means that we all have our say, that outside of threats, lies and calls to overthrow the government nobody can tell us what we can and cannot say in public.
This includes speech and art that we may rightly find foolish and objectionable. I will not see that movie that finds humor in a plot, no matter how silly, to assassinate a head of state. I suspect it would have been better not to have made this thing.
I have, however, gone online to take a look at some of the cartoons put out by Charlie Hebdo, and I found that some depictions of Muhammad are not only disrespectful, but gross. In one, Muhammad is shown from behind, naked and on all fours.
But it’s not only the Muslim prophet that is savaged by Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. One panel shows three rolls of toilet paper, one labeled Koran, one labeled Torah, and one labeled Bible.
Is this expression that Americans, including American Christians, should defend under the banner of free speech?
I’m going to take a deep breath and say yes. And I am going to argue that in matters of protected speech Christians have a special interest in drawing a very wide circle.
Here’s why.
For centuries, people saying what God told them to say have been persecuted. Some people, often powerful people, didn’t want to hear it, claimed these were harmful messages, and punished those men who delivered the message anyhow. Elijah was called a troublemaker. Jeremiah was denounced as a threat to the nation and was thrown into a muddy pit. Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching the Gospel. Zealots plotted to assassinate the former Saul of Tarsus, the rabbi who was, in their view, subverting Judaism with his message of grace.
Medieval and Renaissance reformers were harassed and sometimes imprisoned or killed. The English Separatists were hounded out of their homes, finally choosing and expensive and dangerous journey to North America, where half of them died in the first winter. Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams were exiled from Massachusetts Bay for saying things the colonial authorities did not was said.
History tells us that it’s in our best interest to defend free speech. And if we want to be able to freely say what we want to say and need to say it means we have to fly the same flag for speech we don’t like. The same folks who wanted to suppress a television show they disliked apparently had no problem with a Broadway show called The Book of Mormon (Featuring an openly gay actor) that trolls for laughs by jeering at Mormon ideas and lifestyles. They—and we—can’t have it both ways.
But Christians must draw a narrower circle for ourselves. What the law allows, Scripture sometimes forbids. “A soft answer turns away wrath,” the proverb reminds us, directing us away from shouting matches. “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without…” Paul admonishes. “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how to answer every man.” (Col. 4:5-6)
This does not preclude speech that some people won’t like. We have the right and the duty to object to ideas and political policies that we believe are wrong. Paul engaged in vigorous debate with those who wished to silence the Good News. But he did not defame. He know Jesus, who, when he was reviled, did not revile in turn.
Should the people from Westboro Baptist Church be allowed to show up at military funerals waving signs saying God Hates Fags and claiming that an American soldier’s death was the direct result of God’s displeasure at the growing acceptance of gay marriage?
I think so. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution seems to allow it, as U.S. courts have affirmed.
But should they do it?
Absolutely not. Leaving aside a claim that’s highly questionable, it’s the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong vocabulary.
I’m glad they can say these things; they are Americans, free under the laws of the land to say what’s on their minds.
But I wish they wouldn’t. They are Christians, they say. If so, they are to be governed by the law of love.
It’s in our best interest as Americans and Christians to advocate for a wide latitude in protected speech. It’s a matter of obedience as Christian Americans to practice Scriptural restraint.
