Thursday, January 16, 1997
ETHICS:
The law, human nature not acceptable excusesBy Marlon
Morales
At some level, I expected the responses my article received.
Both of the responses to the article on my encounter with that
young man who was taunting gays were unfortunately misguided. The
dramatic outcry in defense of the rights granted in our
Constitution are not the central issue. The respondents looked
beyond morality in order to respond from a legal perspective. Two
key perspectives stand out. Mr. Hoskins cites legal cases and human
nature, while Mr. Lazarus sites the history of free speech. My
original article is not about civil or criminal law. My article
was, rather, about a transcendent community ethic. Mr. Lazarus has
made a faulty comparison that requires clarification. In fact, both
have made statements about the original issue that require
clarification.
Both respondents interpreted only the law. Law is not without a
human component, however. If law is to be healthy, it must take
into account the human conditions such as love, pain, joy,
satisfaction and the vast diversity of human experiences. Laws and
interpretations of laws do not change society. People change
society. Law originates in the power of the individual and
communities of individuals.
The original article stressed the need to change behavior
patterns that perpetuate the belief that behavior such as
homophobia is just human nature. Mr. Hoskins uses legal precedence
to dismiss "rude and boorish behavior, even when mean-spirited and
hateful" by simply stating that the courts have so ruled and that,
after all, it is the "nature of humans to behave this way"
(Viewpoint, Jan. 13). We cannot dismiss human nature as just
unchanging. Human beings do change. Paradigms do shift. Societies
as a whole change over time. Let us not be overly legalistic. The
fundamental point was not to take away free speech, but to ensure
freedom from hateful speech. Do not dismiss the acts of taunting as
just human nature. It is too fatalistic to say that human nature
cannot change. It is simply too easy to seek other avenues of
social change such as Mr. Hoskins would propose. Do challenge your
nature to change. Human nature has been changing since the very
origin or our species. The reason we are as advanced as we appear
to be today is because of our ability to shift paradigms. We have
learned to manage new situations effectively. Anything else leads
to extinction.
Let me clarify what Mr. Lazarus means by toleration of offensive
speech. Toleration requires me to listen to arguments which I do
not necessarily agree with. I can and have done that. While
"offending somebody often involves nothing more than disagreeing
with that person" (Viewpoint. Jan. 13), there are ways to disagree
under the proper circumstances. Toleration requires a proper venue
of expression. It is just not morally proper to stand out in public
and be hateful to other people.
While it is a fundamental right to speak freely as Mr. Lazarus
states, when has speech been used to be hateful? History also
records what has happened when no one spoke out against public
hateful speech. A brief review of the genocide that taints the
history of our civilizations is proof enough. Is it really
necessary to repeat the atrocities perpetrated by the Klu Klux
Klan, the unlimited public hate which led to the genocide in World
War II of more than 6 million Jewish people and others, the
Armenian genocide, the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the
recent Balkan genocide? Have we not learned? This is the result of
hateful speech: dehumanization.
The people Mr. Lazarus spoke of, namely the Founding Fathers,
Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi, spoke offensive speech,
but their speech does not compare to the kind of speech that the
young man in the dining hall used or the speech people like Mr.
Giampaolo Ladomato of Campus Ministries USA used to refer to "homo"
people (Daily Bruin front page picture. Jan. l3). To equate the two
is misleading. In fact it is not possible to equate the two and so
the argument is faulty. How? The Founding Fathers, Martin Luther
King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi offended those with the privilege to
deny them human dignity. They spoke the angry, dangerous,
subversive speech of social justice. Their kind of speech is
actually more on the same level as my article. Their speech did not
damage our society; it caused us to improve. Furthermore, allusions
to Middle Ages English monarchical practices and the Japanese
internment in World War II are also deceptive. We are not talking
about uncontrolled political power gone wild. When has social
justice been embraced by any government deaf to the cry of its
people’s pain?
My article was not a call to suspend any rights properly
exercised. It was not a call to sabotage precious rights and
freedoms that make our nation unique in the history of
representative government. The Constitution still works this
morning. The debate is not about the legal precedent for free
speech. It transcends case rulings, pending trials or whatever
legal complexities in which one may engage. The debate is about the
human component of law  another way of adding some decency to
the society. My article was an observation on morality which cannot
be thrown aside just for laws. It is at the community level, not in
the complexity of legal documents, and dictates that the answers to
hate be found. As unpopular as it may be, some forms of speech are
morally wrong and demand people act justly to stop such speech when
it is heard.
Marlon Morales is a third-year anthropology student.