actually, let's not censor opinions we don't like

As if arising fully formed from the fever dreams of conservative Christian idiots, Nicholas Jackson betrays an incipient totalitarianism in calling for legal action against people like Chris Broussard who voice opinions that Nicolas Jackson doesn't like. It's a bold plan, this "let's ask Nicholas Jackson what rights people should have" scheme.

It's important to point out from the start just how lousy of an argument the piece is, as an argument. What exactly is the justification here? You've got a vague, deeply confused consideration of the "Fighting Words" legal doctrine, which does not mean nearly what Jackson (writing wholly outside of his expertise) thinks it means. He simultaneously invokes that quasi-legalistic reading and yet acknowledges that it doesn't do what he wants it to do. It's all very confused.

"But the blanket free speech argument is a weak one. Any journalist knows that."
Argument by assertion, check. Appeal to authority, check.

"After a basic media ethics class (the easy way) or a handful of frightening emails from a subject (the hard way), you’ll know a thing or two about libel and slander."
Any journalist can tell you that, in fact, it's extraordinarily hard to legally pursue a case of libel or slander in American courts, that those legal standards have nothing to do with comments like Broussard's but with intentionally misrepresenting facts in a way designed to harm an individual, that libel is a civil matter and not a criminal interdiction, and that the ease with which libel cases can be proven in places like the United Kingdom have a chilling effect on good journalism. That's what any journalist can tell you.

Jackson gives the game away when he says, "frankly, I don’t want to listen to your bullshit." That pretty much sums it up: Jackson doesn't like to hear certain things and wants to legal forbid them. Which is at once juvenile and authoritarian. Guess what, Nicholas: I don't particularly want to read censorious bullshit like yours. Those are the wages of living in a free and open society. There are a few places where you can be sure that people aren't free to go around saying whatever they like, willy nilly. North Korea springs to mind.

Jackson writes, "The problem with the doctrine as it currently stands is that it implies incitement of violence or hatred by the receiver against the giver. It doesn’t consider violence or hatred by the receiver against the receiver, violence or hatred against the self." Is Jackson even remotely aware of the consequences of this thinking? That we should ban any communication that might result in someone killing himself? What if hearing someone advocate for a flat tax makes me want to self-harm? I'm not joking: if the standard is the capacity for a statement to incite self-harm, then there is no protection over any opinion. Any utterance can be an incitement to violence. This is a country where people can get beaten into a coma for complimenting another person's car. People who self-harm are typically people suffering from mental illness. Holding our right to free expression hostage to the whims of the violent behaviors of individuals is perverse and unworkable.

Free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment because those protections come first, because they are the life blood of a free society. Free expression is a non-negotiable precondition of a functioning democracy. Without the power to offend, free expression loses all meaning. Besides: censorship never addresses the root causes of the sentiment that is expressed. Germany bans Nazism. Germany has a huge neo-Nazi problem. Censorship doesn't eliminate ugly sentiment. It pushes it underground, where it festers and multiplies. Censorship contributes to the sense of persecution and the conspiratorial attitudes that feed extremist groups. Bringing those attitudes into the light, to be exposed and debated, is the only way to combat the incorrect, the ugly, or the cruel.

Besides: what is Jackson afraid of, exactly? The expansion of gay rights and the communal recognition of gay dignity are winning, and they are winning precisely because of the right to free expression. It's incredible to me that someone like Jackson can fail to recognize that it was precisely the protection of unpopular ideas that has made it possible for us to evolve on gay rights. 50 years ago, had it been put to a vote, would this country have criminalized the expression of pro-gay sentiment? It's very possible. Thank god, then, that we have the First Amendment, or we would never be in a place where the rights and dignity of gay people are more and more a matter of conventional wisdom. Without the right to controversial speech, to speech considered offensive by some, no social progress would have occurred in this country. No civil rights movement, no gay rights movement, no growth in social justice.

The gay rights movement has been winning despite the opinions of people like Chris Broussard. Or maybe: because of the opinions of Chris Broussard. What, ultimately, was Broussard's argument? That he was opposed to open homosexuality because he finds it contrary to his religion. Which is not an argument, thankfully, that moves many rational adults. What does Nicholas Jackson think is going to happen because of that idea? To me, the backlash against Chris Broussard proves the point: free expression is powerful in part because it allows bigoted people to demonstrate their own irrelevance. Jason Collins made his declaration. Broussard made his. The people who are criticizing Broussard are making their own. That is how ideas work. It's how freedom works. To oppose it on vague grounds of incitement to violence and on a totally unconvincing legal argument is abject stupidity.