Freedom of expression comes badly. Tempted we are, to review its history and its comings and goings in the West, its cradle, but we can not in this opportunity. As a sign of one of the symptoms of its crisis, let’s review this particular case.
Now it turns out that if someone, respectfully, expresses disagreement with the morality of homosexuality, or transsexuality, etc., LGBT lobby members feel “offended” and accuse, those who thus manifest, with making “hate speeches”, etc. The same with radical feminists, etc.
Particularly delicate is the case of the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church approved by JPII and not yet abrogated, which supports the immorality of homosexual relationships in themselves although he warns that nobody’s conscience should be judged in particular.
Anyone can say that he disagrees with it, but I will not be offended or accuse him of “hate speech”.
The problem is that the LGBT lobby wants to make a legal case of that: wants to ban this type of opinion, otherwise incurring in the crime of discrimination, offense and hate speech.
So one of the lines of defense, not of Catholics, but of those who defend a broader notion of freedom of expression, is that the latter includes the “right to offend” (such as Jordan Peterson)
But there we are in a problem. When Charlie Hebdo happened, I wrote an article called “I am respect”, where I affirmed that morally, the freedom of Expression, always implies respect towards the other.
And that’s the point: if someone says “I do not morally agree with homosexuality”, is NOT offending anyone, and if someone says “I do not agree, morally, with the hetero-patriarchal conception of Judeo-Christianity” he is not offending anyone either. In any case, with mutual respect and historical awareness of diverse traditions, they can freely discuss the point without anyone feeling “offended”.
Therefore, if someone feels “offended” because I consider X immoral, the answer is: I am not offending you, but manifesting my moral opinion on the point, without referring to anyone in particular.
Morally, we must NOT offend, that is, disrespect, mock us with contempt, nothing or anyone.
In any case, although this is much debated, there would be a crime of slander and insults after a publication, where, however difficult to enter the cases that concern the LGBT lobby. Because slander and insults refer to an explicit lie that affirms the crime of someone in particular. There is, therefore, no affirmation there that affirms the immorality of X as a subject in abstract and in itself considered.
Therefore, legally, things must be more precise, and criminal types must be clear and distinct. Although the lawmakers and judges we have are the opposite, however, we must affirm that a supposed “crime of offense” enters into arbitrariness impossible to avoid.
In a free society, everyone has the right to affirm their conception of the world “respectfully”.
But historically, we are going badly. The spirit of the First Amendment of the USA has been lost. Truly, almost nobody respects anybody, truly everyone is offended because it is the previous step to what almost everyone wants: to see the prisoner who thinks differently, calling the difference “offense”. We are wrong, very bad. There is almost no freedom of expression, let alone religious freedom, for important cases, that is, where the paradigms are truly different.
Social democracy and the redistribution of income has not only resulted in a golden cage (which is also not gold, but poverty) where people have everything, materially, like slaves on farms where they were treated well: now, In addition, they should think like their master, but that unique thought is descending like a gentle mantle of politically correct thought, and those who leave are gradually suffering, until the poor toad in the boiling water has its brain definitively dead .
Some, of course, will resist, but it will no longer be the right to the First Amendment of what was a classical liberal republic, but the right to resistance to oppression in the universal dictatorship of thought in which the West is becoming . Of course, the West can not “become” that, on pain of disappearing.
Written by Gabriel Zanotti
Member of the Academic Council of Freedom and Progress.
