The best defense is to claim offense.

[darkstar3]

Evelyn Beatrice Hall once summed up Voltaire's views on discourse thusly:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

These words have been used time and again in public debate in order to succinctly express the view of the speaker that the First Amendment protects the free speech of all citizens, no matter how offensive or unpopular that speech might be.

The attitude behind this phrase is one of the larger reasons I became a liberal. Now I find myself asking "where has this attitude gone?"

You see, when someone alerts on a post, one of the reasons they can provide as an argument for hiding the post is that it is (to sum up "hurtful, rude, insensitive" from the alert box) offensive. Should a majority of the jury agree that the post is offensive, the post is hidden, and consequences are handed down to the offending poster.

The problem I have with this is that unpopular/minority opinions are always offensive to someone, and they stand a good chance of being offensive to a majority of jury members. So for those members of the majority who feel uncomfortable when greeted with minority views, the best defense is to claim offense.

And now to confirm the suspicions of some readers, and to make a point as to why I posted this here, let me say this: There is no discussion topic more likely to fall victim to this phenomenon on a liberal board than that of religion. For my entire life, spanning from my fundamentalist Christian years to the atheism of now, my very existence has been offensive to some. Liberal Christians thought I was ruining their religion when I was younger, and they think I'm trying to undermine and eliminate it now.

The jury system isn't going anywhere, and we all know it. That means that on DU3, it will always be possible for the majority to defend themselves against minority views by claiming offense. (It also means that things which offend minorities stand a much higher chance of standing, but that's beside my larger point.) This is unfortunate, to say the least, but we as a group can do better.

Those who venture into the Religion forum must know that the very discussion of such a topic will be volatile. We all need to keep Ms. Hall's words in mind, and maybe some of us should grow some skin.

Or, we could just admit that when it comes to our pet topics we are just as reactionary and in favor of censorship as the people on the right whom we deride.