People who say or write inoffensive things need no protection"

Duncan Phyfe dining room chair in late afternoon sunlight through a veil -- leftover Christmas ribbons strung over the doorways to remind us to be watchful for a slippery, post-waxed floor -- lightly. Note radiator upper left and newly renovated hand-laid parquet floor middle and lower left.

"I'm not sure that we should look to the Catholic pope to defend free expression," writes TigerHawk in response to comments re his latest post. As we said here the other day,

We think "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's applies here. In our view the Vatican struck just the right note for the things that are God's.

Even so, TigerHawk is right when he says

The right of free speech exists only to defend people who say or write things that offend. People who say or write inoffensive things need no protection.

We semi disagree with the totally awesomeTH in this way, as we wrote last week in "The cat among the Islamic pigeons":

Thank GOD our beloved Benedetto -- the Pope who loves cats and Mozart -- is on the case. We agree with Oriana Fallaci -- the renowned Italian Journalist indicted last year in her native country for vilifying, as the law says, a "religion admitted by the state," in this case Islam -- that "You cannot survive if you do not know the past." In an Opinion Journal interview with Tunku Varadarajan last June -- blogged here -- she said "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."

We imagine our friend would agree.

Comments

[Teresa]

"People who say or write inoffensive things need no protection."

My only real problem with this statement is that - we don't always know what someone will find offensive. This means that there must be laws in place to protect everyone - from those who are not trying to be offensive, to those who are offensive unintentionally, to those who work to be outright offensive.

For instance - as just a tiny example of what I mean. I met a young woman at a dinner. I knew her husband through a professional group and knew that they had recently had their second child. I asked her if she was working, meaning having a job outside the home. She took exceptional insult to the question and very huffily said - I WORK very hard at home with my children!

Now having raised two children myself - and having been a stay at home mom for 5 years while they were very young - I was not insulting her for not having an outside job - just asking a question. Yet, the end result is that she was very angry indeed.

This can happen any time with any set of people. So, yes free speech laws are certainly necessary - especially if you might accidentally anger someone in a position to have you thrown in jail.

[TigerHawk]

To be clear, I was not suggesting that putatively inoffensive speech should not be protected. My point was sort of the inverse: that if the right of free speech means anything at all, it must protect speakers who say offensive things. Whether the speech is obviously offensive in advance or only becomes so after the fact (as was clearly the case with these cartoons) is immaterial.

[Teresa]

Oops - looks like I misread. Not the first time I've done that... thanks for clarifying it TigerHawk. Sometimes I scan a little too fast trying to pick up everything quicker... it doesn't always work in my favor :-)

[Sissy Willis]

Around here, that's what we call "creative reading," Teresa. :)