Suppressing speech you don’t like is a lousy way to encourage tolerance

By David McElroy · June 23, 2012

If you’re a high school, what’s the best way to demonstrate tolerance? If you said that the best way to be tolerant is to shut up those who disagree with you, you might already be qualified to be principal of Wolcott High School in Wolcott, Conn.

In April, Wolcott High set aside a “day of silence” to promote tolerance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and “transgendered” people. Student Seth Groody is opposed to gay marriage and didn’t like the school’s promotion of a specific point of view.

So Seth wore a t-shirt with a slash through a rainbow to express his disagreement. (The picture of the front of the shirt was provided by the family.) On the back of the shirt was a graphic with stick figures of a male and female, along with the words, “Excessive Speech Day.”

That’s all he did. He didn’t bully anybody. He didn’t disrupt classes. He didn’t hold protests. He merely had the gall to have a belief that was contrary to what the school wanted him to believe.

“Tolerant” school officials sent Seth to the office, forced him to remove his t-shirt and forced him to wear another shirt instead. In other words, they suppressed speech they didn’t like — in the name of tolerance.

Seth’s family contacted the Connecticut ACLU, which has contacted the school (PDF) to ask for assurance that this won’t happen again. The group’s legal director makes it clear the ACLU disagrees with Seth’s position about gays, but defends his right to express his opinion.

“The First Amendment was written to protect unpopular speech, which is naturally the kind of speech that will always need protection,” Staub said. “The ACLU has fought hard for same-sex marriage and we couldn’t agree with Seth less on that issue, but he is absolutely correct about his right to express his opinion.”

It seems that the legal case is very clear. A school promoting a point of view about a social issue can’t stop a student from expressing his disagreement. The thing that’s frightening is that the case even has to be made.

Most people say they believe in freedom, but when it comes right down to specifics, it appears that most of them simply believe in people having the right to agree with them. I see hypocrisy from most every political group about this at one time or another. It’s not just social liberals or social conservatives. It’s almost everyone.

I don’t see any reason for a school to insert itself into a social issue in the first place, especially since it destroyed effective student participation for the day from the “day of silence” kids — who were allowed to wear tape over their mouths all day. I also don’t see any legal or moral justification for a school to ban a message from someone who disagrees with the popular or accepted opinion.

This issue has nothing to do with accepting gays as human beings and treating them just as anybody else would be treated. The issue is about a government agency dictating what opinion someone is allowed to express.

Official suppression of speech is wrong, even if you hate the point of view being expressed. I’m glad the family is fighting back, and I’m very pleased that the people at the ACLU are taking this position in favor of freedom instead of taking the position that would have been easier and more politically convenient for them to take.

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I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

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