Free Speech

I decided against writing anything about Roland Martin, because:

• Although his comments were inappropriate, especially as a representative of a major news organization, he doesn’t deserve to be suspended or fired.  My reaction when I saw his tweets was, “wow, but you never noticed how feminine you look in an ascot? But whatever.”  His comments didn’t drive me to activism, but I definitely felt like it was unprofessional, especially since he uses that same twitter account to report news.  It’s like me sending mass inappropriate email from my work email address with my work signature.  I need him to be smarter.

• GLAAD and many, many, many other white gay organizations need to severely check their color politics. Gay or not, I’m not standing shoulder to shoulder with any organization that has an issue with my blackness, which is interestingly ironic.  Or maybe not interesting at all.

• Roland is a Black Christian who is caught up in the traditional implication of what makes a man, which is overly appreciated ( and completely twisted if you ask me) in the black community.  I don’t expect his opinion, no matter how liberal he purports to be, to affirm homosexual orientation. 

• And everyone else already beat me to it and their commentary made more sense than what I was ‘bout ta say.

But I did pay attention to a lot of the comments surrounding this faux pas, on both sides of the issue.  Gay or straight most people were defending Roland’s right to free speech and their own.

People tend to take the free speech argument too far.  I don’t know, but I’m guessing the founding fathers didn’t foresee that free speech would be touted by a lot of assholes needing and demanding the right to say awful shit to other people and run behind free speech to do it, or maybe they did because at the time they wanted the right to be assholes and say awful things.  The point is, just because you can say anything doesn’t mean you should.  We don’t live in our own personal bubbles, or maybe some of us think we do and act accordingly, either way, we live among other folk.  Words hurt and to deny that is naïve and irresponsible.  We really need to be careful what we put in the atmosphere.  People don’t talk for YEARS over words . *raises hand*

Any and every opinion can be conveyed in a way that promotes understanding without hostility.  We just choose hostility and malice because most of us enjoy the feeling of momentary superiority over someone every now and again.  That is the dark side of being a human being.  But some thoughts don’t need to be verbalized.  Sometimes we do feel the need to preach our counterfeit truth to the masses, but it almost always is for the purpose of making ourselves look or feel better.

I’m all for free speech—my blog is testament of that, but sometimes you might want to shut the fuck up. You don’t have to say everything.