Musings on Freedom of Speech

My Facebook feed is infected with tons of shared articles and people taking a stand for or against Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathey's stance against gay marriage. I have a lot of conservative friends (how can I not? I'm from East Texas for goodness' sake), and some of them go back and forth or just say they support the message, yadda yadda yadda.  I'm remaining quiet (there) because I don't feel like fighting with anyone, though no one would be surprised that I of course do not support that stance: I think homosexuals should be allowed to marry and have all the rights enjoyed by heterosexuals.  What is so surprising and so baffling to me, though, is that even my conservative friends don't seem to understand that Dan Cathey probably wouldn't approve of most of their ideas of family--hell, most of them wouldn't qualify to operate one of his restaurants, given his requirements! Whatever do I mean? Well, look at what he said:

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit," Cathy said. "We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that." http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/01/us/chick-fil-a-appreciation/index.html

Here's the thing: most Americans wouldn't fit that definition--I'm zeroing in on the whole "we are married to our first wives" statement.  I think that under such a definition (let's assume he probably means families in which the children are born to couples married before the child is born and in which the couple remains married, and neither spouse is on their second or third marriage after divorcing, etc.), many of the people who are happily munching on their Chick-fil-A waffle fries to supposedly defend their beliefs in the immorality of gay marriage don't realize that their beliefs probably aren't shared by Dan Cathey.  Just think of your own friends and acquaintances--how many are divorced? How many had a child out of wedlock? How many had premarital sex or lived with someone before they married?  Like so many things, people focus so much on one of the consequences of a particular belief system that they don't extrapolate the belief system to see the others: that the person who sounds like he is your ally in one arena is likely going to be judging you in another. 

How can most Americans claim to even understand such a notion as the so-called "traditional" definition of marriage?  So many of us have never experienced it, or have seen it self-combust in our own families.  So many of us were brought up in a hodge-podge of blended families and aunts who are still called aunts but who are no longer really married to uncles and so on.  We still talk to our former mother-in-laws and we're Facebook friends with our ex-husband's new wife and sometimes we even celebrate our holidays together. We've been recreating the idea of family for so many years that we don't even recognize when it isn't traditional anymore. And you know what? It's fine.

Another thing that baffles me is that people seem to confuse freedom of speech with freedom from the consequences of exercising freedom of speech. They are not the same thing.  I agree that Cathey has a right to exercise his freedom of speech and to spout his anti-gay message and to put his money into supporting anti-gay causes.  But no one should expect those who don't agree with his message to continue supporting him.  That isn't what freedom of speech guarantees.  He can't be arrested or prosecuted for the things he says, but there's nothing that guarantees his protection from negative press or other types of fallout for voicing his beliefs.  Just as anyone else, when possible, I try to keep my money from going to causes and projects with which I disagree--in a nation in which we have to live together and supply the government with some money for the common good, I know that sometimes I have to support things I otherwise wouldn't (money for wars, costs for prisons to continue death row operations, etc.).  But I'll be damned if I'll knowingly feed money to someone who is actively trying to prevent others from enjoying civil rights I believe they deserve. 

The fact that in most states, it is illegal for a significant segment of the population of consenting adults to marry the person they love seems in opposition to the freedom that our nation is supposed to offer.  I think that so many simply suffer from a lack of imagination: they do not bother to put themselves in the shoes of homosexuals, and to really and truly consider the notion that a law-abiding, tax-paying person could be barred from marrying the person they truly love, who is another human adult who just happens to be of the same sex.  Is it so difficult to imagine a world in which it is absolutely illegal for you to marry the person with whom you are in love?  Legalizing same-sex marriage will not automatically usher in a host of other types of marriages--there's no good reason to think that it is grounds for allowing human-animal marriages, pedophilia, or even multiple spouses.  There are very good reasons for barring those other types of relationships that do not apply to marriages between same-sex partners.

In any case, that is my rant.  I've hidden it out here, where hardly anyone comes, but it is nice to have it out there anyway.