Tag: First Amendment

We Are Family

Work at home Friday, and my alarm kitty let me sleep in a few extra hours, so praise be at the very least, right? I do feel a bit fatigued this morning–my hip joints and legs ache a bit–but hopefully that won’t impact the day too terribly. I have some data entry to do and quality assurance to check off my to-do list. I have some errands to run, too–making groceries and the mail–which I will do after I get my work done. It looks to be sunny outside this morning; we’ve not had rain in a while, and there’s none in the forecast, either. As much as it rained in July and early August, we’re still almost in a drought in southeastern Louisiana. Wild that we’ve not had enough precipitation down here to stave off a drought…but it’s also why the humidity dialed back these past few weeks.

I finished reading the manuscript last night and made lots of notes, so I am also hoping to make a lot of progress this weekend on getting it finished, or at least much closer to the finish line. I was pretty tired when I got home from work–being client-facing in the clinic for thirty-two hours is a lot–and so ensconced myself with the manuscript and my lap kitty into my easy chair while catching up on the news, before watching the first episode of this season’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which somehow manages to keep the original spirit of these shows–delusional, petty women who create drama out of nothing–without somehow ruining it in some way. I’m pretty sick of most of the others, and it is true that Bravo will try to milk every single penny out of a franchise rather than letting it die a natural death when it’s time. It’s the way of American television, after all. I also slept deeply and well–the exhaustion, most likely–and so am hoping to get a lot done today.

First things first, though–I need a new to-do list.

This week saw the most horrifying example of government overreach and censorship perhaps in our nation’s history, directly violating the First Amendment. I was also extremely disappointed to see ABC/Disney caving in to a government demand, particularly when you think about how firm and steadfast progressive support for Disney has been when they’ve faced boycott threads from the Hard Right. Is this the same fucking company that filmed Johnny Tremain? As far as I am concerned, I would have sued the complaining Hard Right affiliates for breach of contract or cut off their national ABC feed. You can’t make money without any content, can you? The fact that major network affiliate companies have just publicly admitted that they don’t support free speech and filter content with an agenda for their audiences means they shouldn’t be allowed to be in broadcasting, period. You either take all of our content, or you get none of it, would be my position. Obviously, my view and opinion on how all of this works is uninformed and possibly naïve, since I don’t know how this stuff works, but when a media company goes on the record making demands of talent and makes threats? I really don’t think you should be in business when you’re on the record as pro-censorship of ideas and speech you don’t like. Disney used to always play hardball and always won. This cowardice in the face of authoritarianism and the fall of the Constitution is something I personally will never forget. And going to their theme park in the middle of Disease Central? No fucking thanks.

Never ever forget that corporations are soulless entities only interested in profit and power, for all that the Supreme Court had determined they count as a person…although a person who cannot face criminal charges or jail time. How precisely does that kind of personhood work? Sad that corporations have more legal protections than people, isn’t it? And isn’t that really the bottom-line problem in this country, after its systemic racism and dedication to preserving white supremacy and the American heresy?

I’ve also gone back to my old standard rule of social media: if you come across my feed talking stupid-ass shit, I am going to not engage but just block you. Yesterday I saw an author stupidly claiming that this recent outrage wasn’t a First Amendment violation but a business decision. This woman, who clearly is too stupid to understand anything, has had some shitty takes before–but I have no time or patience for anyone who is that stupid…so out the airlock she went, and not sorry to see her stupid flat unwashed ass go, in all honesty. Here’s hoping this helps my sanity going forward and stops me from wasting my time.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back on the morrow most likely.

Oh, look, yet ANOTHER sexy image of St. Sebastian. At least he hasn‘t been “penetrated” yet by the arrows…

We Didn’t Start the Fire

As Banned Books Week comes to a close, it was exponentially more important and timely this year than before–given the Right Wing’s vicious, well-organized and ultimately doomed to failure attempts to control what people are allowed to fucking read in this country (for the record, you shrewish harpy lying “Moms4Liberty”–the First Amendment exists because the Founding Fathers foresaw the rise of people like you, and amended the Constitution to stop your skank, anti-American asses).

I’ve participated in Banned Books Week in the past; I’ve certainly done readings during it (the ones I remember reading from are Annie on My Mind by the late Nancy Garden–which was not only burned but tried for obscenity--and Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis; I should have read from Peyton Place at least once). I’ve not participated in a long time–haven’t been asked, to be honest–and so I don’t know if anything is going on in New Orleans for it, or whether it’s something we no longer do here, or what; but I never get offended when I’m not included. Life’s too short for that–and yes, I am well aware that such a thing used to offend me, which was incredibly stupid. I’m really sorry I spent so much of my life and my time allowing negativity such free rein in my head.

The first time I did Banned Books Night, it was after Hurricane Katrina (at least the first one I remember) and it was at the House of Blues; Poppy Z. Brite also read, and I gave him a ride home afterwards; it was in that car and on that ride that he convinced me I could write another Scotty book despite everything that had happened to New Orleans since I’d written the last one; that’s why Vieux Carré Voodoo was dedicated to him.

He gave me Scotty back after a very difficult time, and I will always be grateful for that,

Above are the covers of my seven of my first books. They all look pretty racy, don’t they? But only two of them are actually erotica–Full Body Contact and FRATSEX. Those were the only two erotica anthologies I edited under my own name before switching to Todd Gregory.

The reason I am sharing the covers is because the covers is what the Concerned Women for America, Virginia Chapter, used to get me banned personally (not just my books!) from a high school in suburban Richmond. They used the covers to try to get the Gay-Straight Alliance at a high school shut down, and they used those covers in the House of Burgesses to try to get GSA’s banned at every state-supported school in the state of Virginia.

They came for me based on the covers, not the content–because they had not read the content.

And please, bear in mind, they did not include the erotica anthology covers in their attempts.

In other words, they called me a gay pornographer but didn’t use the actual pornography I actually had done to try to get me banned.

There’s a book in the entire experience at some point for me; I’ve always intended to write a book about the experience called Gay Porn Writer–because that was how they branded me, and the news media, in their attempts to be fair and unbiased, gladly picked up that branding without question or thought or without even looking into me and my writing career in the slightest bit. It was also my first experience with learning that the media cannot be trusted; they are not driven by a desire to print and report the truth; they’re looking for clickbait headlines that drive clicks or people to pick up the paper (print was still very much a thing back then) and which headline would you click on:

Gay author banned from local high school; First Amendment questions raised

or

Gay porn writer’s high school appearance cancelled.

The second one is a lot more enticing, as well as concerning, don’t you think?

That, to me, was the most interesting thing of the entire experience; the perceptions, smears, slanders, and how no one was even the slightest bit interested in the truth. The question that was at the heart of the entire thing is precisely what is driving the bans and book removals and so forth now: how old is old enough to know that queer people exist, that literature and art about us exists, and that we’ve always been here despite being regularly erased from history. It also begged the question we are fighting yet again today: does merely the mention of an alternate sexuality automatically make the book adult content–which really means pornography. We can’t have kids thinking about sex, can we? And we certainly can’t have kids reading a book, recognizing the struggle a character is going through as similar, and feeling less alone, now can we? We’ve got to keep those queer kid suicide rates high!

You see, even the homophobes know the truth that they cannot eradicate our existence, and they also know the truth that the only difference between queer people and straight people is who we are sexually attracted to; ergo, even if you don’t talk about what it means but you have a character who identifies as queer–the “queer” difference means kids will either know that queer people exist (THE HORROR!!!) or think about sex.

And certainly, we cannot have anyone under the age of eighteen thinking about sex, can we? Just because most people become obsessed with it after going through puberty doesn’t mean we should educate them properly. Proper education for teenagers about sex and sexuality would mean a drop in teen pregnancies, teen STI infections, and the need for teen abortions. The spurious argument against sex education for teens has always been we’re just encouraging them to have sex. But that’s stupid; their fucking hormones are encouraging them to have sex, no matter what we teach them, and the more we teach them that sex is bad and wrong will only encourage them to do it more–and once they realize it’s actually a lot of fun and nothing bad immediately happened–they will have more of it.

It’s just basic human psychology. Deny someone something and they will want it all the more even if they weren’t interested in it to begin with. Nothing is more desirable than the forbidden.

The smart thing to do is educate them properly about safety, the risks and hazards of having sex at a young age–and this kind of education will also help teach them about finding the language to get help for sexual abuse they may be experiencing.

But oh no! We don’t want them to have sex! Because not educating them about sex and sexuality has worked so well so far, right? Better they find out by looking stuff up on-line or going to porn sites, right? As a sexual health counselor, I am constantly amazed at the things my clients do not know, or how wrong what they think they know is. Every day I see how our educational system fails to prepare us for one of the most important aspects of our lives.

And learning that queer people exist, can live and love and have happy and fulfilling lives, well, that isn’t what these people want for kids. No, if you’re queer, they want you to be miserable and unhappy and suicidal. What could be more Judeo-Christian than that? The rise in people identifying outside the gender/sexuality binary doesn’t mean that prior generations didn’t have those same people existing in them; just that the world and society wasn’t as accepting and understanding then so they had more to lose by coming out, by talking realistically about who they are and what they feel–and it’s scary, very scary. People who do fall into those binaries, who don’t have to worry about what other people will think about who they are and how they identify, shouldn’t be the ones deciding what is real and what isn’t.

And the sad truth is these people are simply terrified of having a queer child, period. So, they figure if they take away anything that might tell their child it’s okay to be queer and to be yourself, their child will instead choose to live in a closet for the rest of their lives and be completely miserable.

Which tells me all I need to know about what kind of parents these people are.

Their love has conditions, which means it isn’t love at all.

I was always under the impression that parents, first and foremost, want their children to be healthy and happy….which is apparently another myth I’ve been gaslit into believing since childhood. #notallparents

American Life

Friday Eve! Or Thursday, in actuality. But we’ve made it this far, with just today and tomorrow to get through before sleeping in on the weekend! Huzzah! I slept decently last night–not deeply, not that wonderful “I’ve turned into a log” coma-type sleep, but it was good enough that I don’t feel tired this morning, and I actually was awake before the alarm. It’s ridiculous how much more awake I feel when I don’t get up to an alarm–and how much less resentful I feel.

I also woke up to an email that the Nancy Drew action figure I pledged to support through Kickstarter reached it’s funding goal. I got the one from the cover of The Secret of the Old Clock, where she is wearing a green outfit, is holding a screwdriver, and looks (according to That Bitch Ford) about forty years old. Given that Nancy will be a hundred this decade, forty’s not a bad look on her.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I got home, worked for a few hours, and then repaired to the chair to rewatch this week’s Ted Lasso (which was marvelous) and then we finished off Shrinking, which is one of the funniest shows to come along in a long while. I talked about this the other day, and the quality and high level of writing and acting continue through the final episode, which was also one of the greatest (and most unexpected) literal cliff-hangers I’ve seen in a long while.

I have been watching, with growing alarm and disgust, the recent right-wing war on anything non-Christian (which is hysterical, because nothing they believe is Christianity: you shall know them by their acts) and especially everything not straight and not white. Who knew straight white people were so fucking fragile? (Everyone non-white and non-straight) They also have incredibly weak faith in their Lord and Savior; because anything that might challenge that belief has to be eradicated, made not available, and swept under the rug and hidden from view because it makes them uncomfortable. What I would like to say to all of these people is mind your own fucking business. The hypocrisy of beating the drums and warning people about how they’re aren’t haters “just worried about the children! Won’t someone think of the children?” (Yet they are also the same people who believe everyone should be armed to the teeth and that school shootings are A-Okay with them because you know, ‘slippery slope’ and all that. Of course, they use the First Amendment for toilet paper but hey, newsflash! The Founding Fathers considered everything in the first more important than the second, otherwise GUNS would have been the First Fucking Amendment, wouldn’t it? No, they deliberately made it the second because the rights and privileges granted in the first were more important.)

The other day, a friend in the Queer Crime Writers’ group I belong to posted a screenshot of the age restriction requirement on the home page of a small but highly regarded lesbian press, where you actually had to plug in your birthdate in order to gain access. This was done to reduce potential liability in such states as Texas and Florida that have been passing unconstitutional, flagrantly Fascistic laws–laws that are deeply unpopular, but merely designed to advance the presidential aspirations of their deeply unlikable governor, who has the charisma of Ted Cruz and the charm of Matt Gaetz; nothing turns out the bigots like a fear that other people might be as equal in the eyes of the law as they are. This was horrific–but small queer presses don’t have the money or resources to fight these draconian, restrictive laws; one complaint from some skeevy parent in Florida whose pastor is probably molesting their children but oh no queer books! is what they see as the real problem. The demonization of trans people–directly tied into their stupid notion that transwomen and drag queens are the same thing (repeat after me: not all transwomen do drag–is the exact same thing as the crusades against gays and lesbians (not that far back), and is the same song, different verse. And why not go back to the scare tactics that have always worked? The piece of shit “libs of TikTok” woman is nothing more than a more modern, less talented Anita Bryant (she was a bigoted bitch, but I will give her credit for her singing talent; she actually had a successful career as a singer and spokesperson for the Florida Orange Growers–Florida again; it’s always Florida–until her bigotry destroyed her career. I have no sympathy for her, so don’t even try it. She deserved worse than divorce, bankruptcy, and public scorn.); the insidiousness of straight white women leading homophobic movements (see Maggie Gallagher) is predicated on motherhood; they are just mothers worried for their children! Won’t someone think of the children? (Unless it’s school shootings and legislation that might make a difference–doing nothing clearly isn’t working–in which case, who fucking cares about the kids? GUNS! MAH FREEDUM!)

These are indeed scary times, in which the complacent Left has allowed the rise of Fascism on the right, and even now isn’t doing enough to fight back against it; when small presses that have been doing the heavy lifting for queer books when we are not in fashion at the big houses could be fined and/or punished by a state for the crime of selling books on their website. (The irony of this happening to Bywater Books–who later took it down–whose DNA goes back to Naiad Press which was based in fucking Florida, is something you couldn’t put into a book. (In times like these, I miss Barbara Grier. Barbara would have ripped off deSantis’ head and shit down his neck.) This brings up several legal questions–which should be left to the lawyers–but it seems to me these laws and restrictions are not only censorship but also violate interstate commerce laws as well as the full faith and credit article in the Constitution.

It’s so tiring to be constantly having to explain to people why you deserve to be treated like a human being.

It occurred to me last night before I went to bed that I need to use this little platform better than I have been. I am sure anyone who reads my blog probably is on the same page as me politically; I can’t imagine this being a safe space for a bigot. But I’ve not been talking much about politics here, not in a long time at any rate, because I’ve always been of the mindset that it would just be preaching to the choir. Anyone who knows anything about me, or has read my books, should know where I stand politically. That I oppose bigotry and prejudice of any kind. That I believe that all Americans should be equal in the eyes of the law; that it’s the government’s job to intervene when something in the public sphere reaches crisis stage–whether it’s recovery from a weather event, health care, or violence. In a capitalist system, the government has to step in when the system fails to correct it.

But now we have a Supreme Court that seems determined to roll back the clock to the “good ole days” when non-white non-straight non-cisgender people were invisible–and it was socially acceptable to mistreat them if they weren’t.

For the record, your freedom ends before it infringes on mine.

Age restrictions and requiring adult permission to check out books dealing with queer or racial issues in this country essentially renders all that work–regardless of its intended audience–as pornography.

Queer characters are automatically pornography, because that’s all the “christians” think about when they think about queer people–dicks in asses, tongues in vaginas–which is frankly kind of creepy and revolting. I don’t look at straight people and wonder, does she like to do reverse cowgirl? Does he like it when she pegs him? because it’s none of my fucking business. I’m sorry you people are so frightened by sexuality and the mere thought of sex–but maybe try not thinking about it for a minute or two? My sex life is none of your business just as yours is none of mine. There is nothing more invasive that government intervention into your sex life.

Talk about slippery slopes*! Straight people also do oral and anal. Straight people are also into kink, threeways, orgies, leather, BDSM, you name it. And if we the people allow the government to legislate our sex lives…don’t you think it’s entirely possible they’ll come for yours someday? Why not outlaw oral and anal sex (sodomy laws are still on the books in some states, including Louisiana…those laws are never enforced on straight people, quelle surprise). Why not virginity laws? Or a virginity tax you only have to pay once you’ve had sex? If this sounds insane or crazy to you, please bear in mind that this is precisely what Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, among umpteen others, are trying to do.

It was nice, though, actually feeling like a full-fledged American citizen there for a few years. I should have known it would be a fleeting feeling.

*Of course, the only slippery slope the right cares about has to do with the Second Amendment, or as I like to call it, the Eleventh Commandment.

Born This Way

Monday and we survived Weekend One of Carnival Parades. *whew*. I am exhausted, though, which is never a good thing for a Monday morning of a new work week. Heavy heaving sigh.

Now I know what ‘bone tired’ means. And speaking of ‘bone tired’….

As Constant Reader knows, I taught a session on writing LGBTQ characters at the SinC into Great Writing workshop at Bouchercon this past September in New Orleans. It was an amazing experience, and it was enormously flattering to be asked to do so in the first place. I was also asked to write something for the Sisters newsletter, pretty much given carte blanche to write whatever I wanted to, and since I had an essay about being a gay writer on the backburner (I’ve been toying with it for almost a year) which I was calling “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” I said sure. As I was wrapping up deadlines and looking ahead to the glory days of NOT HAVING ANY DEADLINES, I started writing the essay again, whittling away things from the original unfinished draft that no longer fit my thesis and…I got about halfway through and stopped.

The reason why I stopped? Because it is next to impossible to write about the challenges of being a gay crime writer writing about gay characters without sounding like the biggest whiner in the world, and I don’t want to be that guy.

Then, a question posted on a list-serve I belong to for crime writers triggered some answers that were so horrific, so thoughtless, and so ignorant that I suddenly knew how to write the essay–or at least how to address it with a starting place.

One of the current ‘boiling points’, if you will, in our current society is the question of ‘cultural appropriation’ as well as ‘cultural insensitivity’, and how these questions apply in a broader sense with the American guarantee of First Amendment rights under the Constitution (without getting into the reality–which most people either don’t understand, or chose to ignore– that ‘freedom of speech’ is actually only guaranteed as a protection from persecution and prosecution from the state; not from other people, and certainly not from consequences. The example I always use is, “Well, when I worked at the ticket counter I couldn’t tell a passenger to go fuck himself, could I, without getting fired?”) Recently–I don’t remember where I saw this, but it was on Facebook; I don’t know if it was from an industry publication or a newspaper or something–I read a piece about the major publishers hiring what were called ‘sensitivity readers’ to read manuscripts dealing with characters who were out of the author’s experience to make sure the characters weren’t offensive. I am of two minds about this, and I can certainly understand why people would find this alarming/concerning; how much control/power would these ‘sensitivity readers’ have over the author’s work? Not to mention the fact that no one can speak for an entire community; what one gay man finds offensive the next three you ask may not.

So, yes, I do have a bit of a problem with the concept of sensitivity readers. However, if I were writing a character from a culture not my own; say, a New Orleanian of Vietnamese descent, wouldn’t I want to talk to a New Orleanian or two of Vietnamese descent? Wouldn’t I want my character to be as authentic and realistic as I can possibly make him or her? I’ve talked to cops, private eyes, and FBI agents to make my characters are grounded in reality as I can. So, why wouldn’t a heterosexual writer creating a gay character want to get some insight from a gay person? And so on, and so on, and so on. I don’t see a problem here, but again, that is the work that should be done before the manuscript is turned into the editor and publisher, and I’m not sure how comfortable I would be with that for myself.

Of course, there are those who, because of this, have pulled out the ‘censorship’ battleflag, thoroughly missing the point. The First Amendment does not guarantee anyone a publishing contract, nor does it guarantee a platform; if it does I’d like to be booked on both The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert when my next book comes out, thank you very much. Oh, wait, it doesn’t mean that, after all?

Blimey.

Which is my roundabout way of getting to the latest provocateur, Milo. People were rightly outraged when the conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster gave him a book deal; people were rightly outraged when he started getting invitations to speak at colleges and universities; people were outraged when he got invited to go on Real Time with Bill Maher (whom I also have problems with, but we’re talking about Milo now). As loathsome as the things he says are, I will defend his right to say them against any attempt by the state to silence him. Simon & Schuster is a business; they have a right to give a book deal to anyone they think will make them money (although I seriously doubt this book will make them any money; I see it going onto the remainder table pretty damned quickly, and not even being released in paperback; unless, of course, conservative clubs and organizations buy it in bulk at a deep discount as giveaways for fundraising drives and so forth–which is often how people like Ann Coulter wind up on the bestseller lists), and likewise, college/university groups have a right to invite anyone they want to come speak to them…but rescinding those invitations (and promise of payments and expenses) when said invitations blow up in their faces is not censorship as defined by the law and the Constitution. The same law that gives Milo the right to say what he does also applies to those who oppose the things he says.

That’s um, kind of how our country works.

Being utterly uninterested in anything he has to say (I’ve never enjoyed listening to transphobia or racism), I didn’t watch Real Time with Bill Maher, only watching the clips of Larry Wilmore telling him to go fuck himself, which I will also admit to enjoying immensely. (Of course, now that clips of him talking approvingly of sex between children and adults have turned up–and really, who didn’t think something like this was going to come up; it was just a matter of time–he won’t be getting invited to speak anywhere anymore, and I suspect S&S will be cancelling their book contract.) But Milo–like Ann Coulter before him–fascinates me. (And for the record, I use ‘fascinate’ with the old meaning of like how a snake fascinates its prey; I do think he is kind of dangerous, and snake-like.) I always wonder how people like him come to be. I wrote eighty pages of a Paige novel in which the victim was a Coulter-like character, attempting to peel back the layers and see what could create someone like her/him (that manuscript is in a drawer, as no one had the slightest interest in publishing it). Coulter apparently sees herself as a comedian/performance artist; I sadly know people who know her, and they state she doesn’t really believe what she says but it makes her money; I suspect Milo is kind of similar to her in that regard, yet at the same time…

Take, for example, his appearance on Bill Maher. Milo is precisely the kind of gay stereotype that triggers homophobic reactions from the right, and even from some gay men: he isn’t particularly masculine, and wore enormous faux pearls around his neck on the show, which he played with as he spoke (damn it, I am going to have to watch); he is an effeminate gay man (think a conservative Jack from Will & Grace, or Emmett from Queer as Folk: the kind of gay man that ‘straight-acting’ gay men loathe and despise). The loathing of homophobes for effeminate gay men (and, let’s be honest, a number of GAY MEN as well) has everything to do with the culture of masculinity and the fear of ‘not being a man’; which, really, is where homophobia and sexism and transphobia comes from.

I just saw on Twitter that Milo may lose his job at Breitbart over the pedophilia comments; I am not holding my breath, nor will I hold my breath about losing the contract with S&S. He has, always, positioned himself as a spokesperson for the First Amendment; all of this should give him more material to work with, and of course, I am sure it’s the fault of the ‘politically correct’ who ‘want to silence him.’

So, I doubt he will go gently into that good night, and he will undoubtedly continue to fascinate me the way cobras fascinate their prey before they kill and eat them.

I always am curious at to what made these types of people what they are.

One More Try

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…I used to post my opinions about hot-button topics, both here and on social media. In some ways, this blog began for two reasons, thirteen years ago (!): first, to get me writing again and second, so I could talk, here, about things no one else would let me, or pay me, to write about. It was the midst of the Bush administration, and the 2004 election, in which homophobia and fear of the gays was used to get people out to vote–and to vote against the queer community’s rights and realities and humanity, if you want to boil it down to its ugliest truth–and having just lived through the brutality of a hate crime, I needed a place to vent. And vent I did, for many years. I did realize that there was a bit of the “preaching to the choir” element to this; no one who would actually learn anything from something I posted was likely to read it, and I finally realized a few years ago that arguing with someone on social media rarely, if ever, did anything besides raise my blood pressure and ruin my day. And my time is so precious that I hated wasted it in any way when I could be productive with that time instead. I also realized that I am a gay man and an author; if you know those two things about me you pretty much should be able to figure out what my positions are on social and political issues. (I still love the one-star review I got on Amazon for one of my Chanse books, where the complaint was about how I “used my book to promote my liberal agenda.” Because of course a novel by a gay man with a gay main character is your usual go-to for a conservative point of view?)

Occasionally, I will post when something is so egregious it cannot be ignored; the Trayvon Martin murder was one of those. But I am digressing. The point of today’s entry in Short Story Month is to talk about freedom of speech; which is also apparently a hot button topic. I personally have grown incredibly weary of people arguing about censorship and freedom of speech when they don’t know what the hell they are talking about; in the United States, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but that only pertains to the government. To wit, here is the actual language of the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, the government is prohibited from censoring speech, or abridging free speech in any way. There have been rulings by the Supreme Court that have inhibited free speech in some way; but please note that nowhere does that amendment guarantee anyone a platform, or freedom from the consequences of their free speech; only that the government itself cannot stop someone from having a platform, nor punish anyone for using their right to free speech.

It is astonishing how people will bleat about their right to free speech, or scream censorship, while trying to tamp down on someone else’s right to free speech. If I say something homophobic or sexist or racist, there are consequences from the free market I would have to face as an author; boycotts, attacks on social media, and so forth–and I would never try to stop anyone from doing so; as long as the government is not involved everyone has that right to protest me for things I’ve said or done, or boycott me, or whatever as long as they don’t threaten to harm me or my loved ones physically. (And for the record, this HAS happened to me.)

Do I find Ann Coulter and Milo whatever his name is reprehensible? Yes, they are vile people, and the things they write and the things they say in the public forum revolt me. Do I think they should be banned? No, I don’t. But cutting off Milo or whatever his name is’ Twitter account for violating their terms of service is NOT censorship or inhibiting his freedom of speech. Twitter is not a public utility, and he agreed to those terms of service when he signed up for a Twitter account. He violated those terms, and thus was banned from the site.

Which brings me to today’s story, “Knox”, by Harlan Ellison, which I read in his collection Approaching Oblivion.

“Knox” is…well, it’s Ellison at his most provocative, his most thought-provoking, and his most subversive. The story was originally published in Crawdaddy magazine in 1974 (is Crawdaddy still around?), and while that was definitely a different time, the language used in the story is kind of raw in the present day–and yet it is precisely the kind of story that people need to read.

I am not going to quote from the story because the language is so raw and racist and prejudiced and bigoted; yet the story itself is powerful because of the language Ellison uses. He uses every word that has ever been used as a pejorative for any racial or ethic minority, including the n word (IN THE FIRST SENTENCE). It’s a bit jarring, because I can’t even use the word as a quote; but they are all here in the story. Knox, the title character, works in a factory under a Fascist type government but also is part of a ‘neighborhood watch’, whose focus is to ferret out anti-government sentiment, treason, and those who aren’t basically of white European descent. Knox at the beginning of the story is a part of the watch, hoping to become a member of the “Party” so he can advance at work…and over the course of the story, as Knox becomes more and more a member of the party and a tool of the government, no longer thinking, loyalty to the party more important than friends and family…well, it’s very chilling.

And sadly, I don’t think such a story–because of the language–would get published today.

But that’s a part of why I love Ellison so much; even as he writes about inhumanity, there is so much humanity there. Knox becomes a horrible, horrible person…but you also see it happening and you also understand how it happens…and that makes it even more powerful, and awful. This, you see, is how normal, every day lovely German people became Nazis.

And now, back to the spice mines. Here’s a hunk: