Johnny’s Psychological Trauma
Diatribe point me to this blog post regarding a current federal court appeal concerning ones constutional right for freedom of expression. Volokh writes:
Tyler Harper wore an anti-homosexuality T-shirt to school, apparently responding to a pro-gay-rights event put on at the school by the Gay-Straight Alliance at the school. On the front, the T-shirt said, “Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned,” and on the back, it said “Homosexuality is Shameful.” The principal insisted that Harper take off the T-shirt. Harper sued, claiming this violated his First Amendment rights.
He continues:
Harper’s speech is constitutionally unprotected, the Ninth Circuit just ruled today, in an opinion written by Judge Reinhardt and joined by Judge Thomas; Judge Kozinski dissented. According to the majority, “derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students’ minority status such as race, religion, and sexual orientation” — which essentially means expressions of viewpoints that are hostile to certain races, religions, and sexual orientations — are simply unprotected by the First Amendment in K-12 schools. Such speech, Judge Reinhardt said, violates “the rights of other students” by constituting a “verbal assault[] that may destroy the self-esteem of our most vulnerable teenagers and interfere with their educational development.”
I was outraged, but Darwin took the position that students have a right to be protected from “derogatory and injurious remarks” when they are students k-12 in a public school. Effectively he was arguing that students have a right to have the government intervene when others are saying things that are injurious towards them. My position was the opposite and the governments obligation lies in protecting students who wish to express their ideas peacefully and has no business making sure people are not ‘injured’ by others speech.
To make my point clear I gave an example of Johnny. Poor Johnny has a crush on Sarah. He wants nothing more than to go to prom with her. However before he can ask, she tells him that he is a dork and would never go to prom with her. Since Sarah has caused ‘derogatory and injurious remarks’ to Johnny the state would have to intervene. With no way of distinguishing between the types of trauma the state is reduced to an entity constantly intervening on the behalf of anyone that claims someone has caused them some kind of harm by expressing their idea. Effectively in an effort to avoid injurious remarks the state would have to censor everybody.
To get around this problem Darwin or someone else will have to explain to me how wearing a t-shirt that expresses an opinion causes a different kind of injurious remark then when Sara expressing her opinion does. I suspect that to accomplish will require reference to minority status which is precisely why the judge makes use of this idea in his ruling. However I’m not sure what this kind of argument would look like and until someone makes it clear to me I hold my current position. The government defaults to protect rights of expression and not rights of not being injured by verbal discourse.
*As a side note: This case probably should have been dismissed because it seems that the kid who was wearing this shirt was trying to be a jack ass. If true, then sorry, while the constitution does protect your right to jack assery, you shouldn’t get your day in court since you were being a jack ass anyway and the principal rightly censored you for that reason.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Isn’t it a matter of degrees? We don’t want to censor little Sara in this case, but what if she had organized all the girls in the school to constantly yell insults at Johnny, denigrate him in class and in front of his peers, get people to threaten to beat him up when he least expects it, etc? Eventually, wouldn’t you want the principal to step in and stop them? And if you do want the principle to stop them, what happens when they say they have a right to free speech, and appeal the principle’s decision in court? What should the judges rule then?
April 24th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Not sure how wearing a t shirt that expresses your beleif is the same thing as organizing a full group of students to threaten and intimidate johhnny.
Still wait for the nuanced distinction.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:25 am
You were the one who was against nuance to begin with, so answer the question: how would you want the court to rule in the case I presented? Do you want all speech to be protected, no matter how damaging it is, or not?
April 24th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Are you stating that a t-shirt is equivalent to a group of girls out to make Johnny miserable? Didnt address my concern in the previous comment.
April 25th, 2006 at 4:11 am
You seemed to be stating before that one girl hurting johnny’s feeling sis equivalent to someone wearing a hurtful t-shirt; now I’m asking you whether that equivialency holds in this more extreme case.
April 25th, 2006 at 5:43 am
In point of fact, I was stating that i see no easily discernible difference between the psychological truama that Sara causes Johnny versus some t-shirt. If anything, the difference is that more psychological taxing for Johnny when Sarah reveals her feelings then when some jack ass wears a t-shirt.
April 25th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Tell johnny that the little girl with that stupid shirt is like a bus with a sign on it ’s front, back or middle. The’ll be another one in 15 minutes so just wait .
April 25th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Your original attempt was to draw a parallel between sara and the t-shirt, and say that if we don’t want to rule against Sara, it’s hypocritical to want to rule against the t-shirt. I then upped the ante on the Sara example, asking whether you would rule against the same type of behavior carried to a much greater extreme. If you say yes, then we’ve shown that you don’t actually want all speech protected, but rahter that you judge each case by how injurious it is (or whatever criteria makes one situation worse than another)- in which case, your outrage over court censorship rings hollow since you simply disagree with a particular judge (who, unlike you, heard testimony from both sides and probably from a number of expert witnesses) about how bad this particular case was.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Did you answer my question?
April 25th, 2006 at 9:43 am
So steve is being a jackass because he knows I’m going to nail him using the Socratic method if he actually answers my question. Since I’m actually interested in moving the discussion forward, I’ll say: the distinction between the two cases is that, after hearing testimony, a judge decided to ban the shirt, whereas no one has ever decided to ban what sara did. The fact that the Sara example feels ludicrous to us IS the difference between the two. No reasonable person would want to outlaw that, whereas many reasonable people - including this judge- would want to outlaw the shirt. The point I am trying to make is that you are acting as though you want all speech protected, but if that’s true, then you have to accede that the extreme case I mentioned should be allowed. If you feel that this extreme case should be ruled against, then all you are saying is that you disagree with the judge in this particular insance about how injurious the t-shirt was in comparison to the Sara example, in which case I would again say that the judge heard expert testimony and you didn’t, and that at any rate the specifics of this case are a much less interesting question than whether or not this type of censorship is in general appropriate.
April 25th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
You still dont answer my question. The close you get is “No reasonable” person would want to outlaw that. This only begs the question why would a ‘reasonable’ person not want to outlaw sarah’s actions?
April 25th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
I think this is an issue that should be handled by the adeptly-skilled guidance counselors of our schools.
April 25th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
I think there should be mandatory periods of the day where everyone has to hug each other
April 25th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
LOL to the last comments (the 11 previous posts somehow missed the point, I’m afraid, cause essentially, they couldn’t elaborate the issue clearly…..).
Mmh, Diatribes post, yet, gets special attention, cause after all, Steve owns this one supersweet T-SHIRT (didn’t we talk about t-shirts the whole time) saying “don’t hug me”… What would the judges say to this one??? During mandatory periods of hugging, Steve’s wearing this t-shirt?? OH MY GOD - we have to call in the federal judges again, before even more feelings get hurt in the process of expressing ones opinion.
April 26th, 2006 at 5:47 am
LOL @ Bettina’s comment. Bettina in fact gave me such a t-shirt and wearing it during a mandatory hug time may be constured as an injurious remark and therefore must be censored.
April 27th, 2006 at 4:56 am
My only responses at this point are scornful and mean-spirited. But I’m glad you all feel children shouldn’t be protected now that you’re safely adults.
(other possible responses were much more mean-spirited)
April 27th, 2006 at 5:55 am
On behalf of all those who read my blog, i just want to thank you for protecting us. One might think the decision to read mean spirited comments is up to the indiviudal reader, but you have taken that choice away from the reader. I suppose my readers are not yet fully developed adults since you feel compelled to protect them.
I suspect you held back your mean spirited response out of fear that the state would find them to be injurious remarks and be forced to lock you in a room until you promised not to express anymore injurious remarks.
April 27th, 2006 at 6:19 am
Thank you for the protection.
Internet V-Chip = Darwin.
April 27th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Wow, I didn’t know I had a civic duty to be a jack-ass so as to provide my fellow citizens the opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not to attend my roller-coaster ride of abusive rhetoric and insulting accusations.
This new-found knowledge should make Christmas alot more interesting this year.
April 27th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Your past Christmas must of sucked.
April 27th, 2006 at 11:22 am
No it was great, just not very interesting.
Which to you, of course, is a ‘moral’ argument.
April 27th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Interesting is a euphenism for uninteresting in this case.
Like i said: sucks.
June 24th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
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