The United Coalition of Reason won at the hearing yesterday. An Order will come from the Judge soon, and that will be far more reliable than any of the other sources.
There's a lot to talk about, and I'll talk about it. I'm going to use this webpage for its proper purpose. This webpage, again, is about me. There are other places in which we can talk about the implications of this victory, but as far as I'm concerned, here's how I feel about it. I'm always interested in how my name gets spelled. I was called Garry Schulze, J.G. Schultz, and even on one newscast Leawood Thomas (which is funny as they managed to misspell LEEWOOD'S name as well as assign it to an old fat guy). My quip about local believers hijacking an airplane and flying it into a CATA bus being unlikely made it into at least one story. We won a great victory yesterday, not just for ourselves but for everyone. That is the nature of civil rights cases. Ultimately they end up not being about the plaintiff but about society at large. We have both faith and knowledge that freedom of expression is good not only for the speaker but for the hearer as well. America became the great nation that it is because from our founding we have valued the free marketplace of ideas. The remedy for speech we don't like is not suppression, but more speech. Does the free marketplace of ideas guarantee that the right ideas will prevail? Of course not. But no other method has anything close to our track record of finding out the truth. Truth may not always win a fair fight, but it is the safest bet. The evidence we put forth showed that we were discriminated against because of the content of our message. But we were not the only victim of discrimination. The underlying basis of the justification for discrimination against our message was the assumption that Christians would respond to our message with vandalism and violence. This attitude is insulting and demeaning to people of faith. Non believers have been active in this community for some time. And though we have been victims of discrimination and prejudice, and we are frequently reminded that we're going to hell, Christians have not responded to us with violence or terror. The Arkansas version of Christianity is law-abiding and bears in mind that the namesake of their faith admonished his followers to put away their swords and turn the other cheek. A Christian has threatened to protest the buses and to start a Christian advertising campaign. That is much more consistent with both his religion's traditions and our founding fathers' confidence in the value of free speech. We have never asked that the voices of others be silenced. I'm very proud of what we have done--not only for nonbelievers but for believers as well. |
AuthorJ.G. "Gerry" Schulze is an amateur linguist who practices law for a living. For more information see his webpage, which has links to some of his other online activities. Archives
October 2015
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Photo used under Creative Commons from paul (dex)