Col 4:6 Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.
I hesitate to talk about a movie I haven’t seen for fear of giving it any publicity, nor will I see it. The Time magazine did an article once on the movie entitled “The Public vs. Larry Flynt”. Apparently it is the story of the Hustler publisher as he fought TV preacher Gerry Falwell in an American court of law. Hustler won. The battle cry for freedom of speech quickly becomes an emotional one. And no where is this battle cry heard as loudly as on the Internet. “I have a right to publish what I want!”
Why does the issue of rights only seem to work in favour of the ‘bad guy’? Write something nasty and avant garde, or paint a picture of something disgusting and everyone looks the other way and pretends that the Emperor is wearing the finest clothes. Say something religious with conviction and suddenly you are an intolerant bigot or even worse, a fundamentalist!
A statement on rights has stuck with me ever since I heard it from one of my public school teacher. “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” We must balance our ‘rights’ with responsibilities. If I think only about the building of my empire and myself, my ‘rights’ may become destructive to someone else’s life. But I have a moral obligation to others that I dare not ignore. Therefore, the exercise of my rights and privileges must be tempered by the question of the good for society as a whole. This certainly applies to the right of free speech.
I don’t expect Larry Flynt will change his ways. He will continue to amass great fortune, because unfortunately there are multitudes of people out there who are so devoid of genuine love that they feed on women being exploited as sex objects. I was flabbergasted to see him, of all people, use the time-worn argument that those who are against pornography simply regard sex as something dirty. Indeed, it is those who exploit the appeal of sex who regard it as something dirty.
God has made everything beautiful. It is humankind that has messed things up so badly. And as we scrape the bottom of the moral barrel, we have enough nerve to find arguments that justify our bottom-feeding habits.
Imagine a ragged-looking person eating what he can find in a garbage dump; Rotting potatoes, mouldy french fries, gangrenous looking ham. You come along and tell him that there is much better food available. He doesn’t have to live that way, and furthermore, if he continues, he will surely contract a disease and die a miserable death. Incredibly, he argues with you about his rights to eat what he wants and to feed it to others as well! If such demented people do exist, we have institutions that will take care of them.
Much of the stuff we find in society in the name of free speech is more harmful than eating from a garbage dump. In fact, a reality-check will show you that in the name of freedom, Hustler has created more bondage and addiction and ruined lives than can be counted.
Free speech? I say, responsible speech.