MAY I SPEAK FREELY?

Last Thursday the Wisconsin Senate voted 33-0 to criminalize demonstrations held within 500 feet of a funeral. Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to sign the bill tomorrow, and 14 additional states are considering similar legislation. If the new law is challenged, it's likely to be found unconstitutional, but it's hard for me to call it wrong-headed.

The bill was a direct reaction to the crazed Rev. Fred Phelps, of Topeka, KS. Obsessed for years with homosexuality, the good Reverend has developed a theology that attributes pretty much everything to God's hatred of gays. Phelps and his congregation have taken to picketing the funerals of AIDS victims and Iraq casualties (God is mad because the U.S. military is too tolerant of gays—a recent Phelps banner read, “Thank God for IEDs”). I'll be the first to stand up for Rev. Phelps' right to publish his ideas, however ugly, in print and on his charming website, www.godhatesfags.com, or to mount demonstrations at public events, but to accost the grieving at a funeral comes awfully close to Oliver Wendell Holmes' “shouting fire in a crowded theater” analogy.

All this is concurrent with the international incident that began with twelve now infamous cartoons originally published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September. The cartoons were solicited by the paper's culture editor, Flemming Rose, who felt that Europeans were too timid in their criticism of the Islamic world. He asked members of the Danish cartoonist union to lampoon the religion, and the rest is history. Rose claims he was trying to open up the discourse, but if he didn't foresee the consequences of poking a stick in the eye of a culture that already feels under attack from all quarters, he's a fool. More likely, he's a scoundrel. The video images of rioting Muslims have been broadcast around the world, helpful to no one but the European right wing, and the situation continues to spiral. Davoud Kazemi, of the conservative Iranian paper Hamshahri, reacted by announcing a contest for the best Holocaust cartoon. Great idea, Davoud! That's sure to improve the situation! Give that guy a Peabody! In response, the right-wing online Swedish paper Sd-Kuriren announced their own contest for best cartoon disparaging Islam. Get ready for continued hilarity, folks!

Freedom of speech is easy to espouse, difficult to endure. In 1989 people were free to walk about Tienanmen Square with banners proclaiming, “Hurray for Deng Xiaoping!” with impunity. It's the ugly and damaging speech that tests our ideals. Legislation is largely an exercise in drawing rather arbitrary lines on a continuum, and the stories recounted above reside on an uncomfortable gray patch. They are all examples of speech meant not to enlighten, but to hurt. We'd all be better off without it, but when a government starts separating the good speech from the bad, it takes a broad step toward Totalitarianism. At the risk of sounding like Rodney King, it's our responsibility as citizens to communicate constructively.

Last week the Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote a letter taking the Washington Post to task for publishing a Tom Toles cartoon critical of Donald Rumsfeld, that depicted the U.S. Military as an injured, limbless patient. I'm willing to give the Chiefs the benefit of a doubt, to assume they didn't get the joke, and were acting only in solidarity with injured veterans, but any governmental reprimand for journalistic criticism doesn't inspire hope.