READERS RESPONSES
Your piece on the Gay Marriage issue and the decision by California Judge Vaughn Walker is right on. (VICTORY FOR LIBERTY & JUSTICE FOR ALL – Issue: 8/11/10)
Of course, as you have written before and here again, constitutional rights are not to be voted on. They’re rights! As if anyone would allow a vote for gun control in New York or Massachusetts or any other “Blue State” or votes to see whether certain forms of artistic expression should be outlawed in say any ultra-conservative “Red State.” This is what has been missing with the entire Prop 8 debate. It is about justice and law and nothing else. In some places, hardly any to be honest, I have read or heard this salient and reasoned argument, but not as to-the-point and as passionately as yours. I know this has been your main issue for many years now, and as you state, it is a terrific victory for the sane and law-abiding among us. There is so much more to go, but it is a start, a most significant start at that.
—Sherrie Gallagher
Interesting that you bring up Thomas Jefferson, the man who supported castrating homosexuals and polygamist? (A Bill for proportioning crime and punishment).
—Chase
The fight over civil rights has always begun in the private sector first, in the southern churches or Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, but nonetheless it’s always going to be initially opposed by the status quo. As you illustrated beautifully in your more recent columns, the correlation between the battle over the Manhattan Islamic Center and free speech or rights such as the right for tax paying consenting adults to be granted a civil union recognized by law is resounding. We as Americans, true Americans, should stand up for those denied what we always beat our chests that we’ve died for and what conservative bozos and liberal whiners always try to politicize, but is beyond politics and partisanship—truly God-granted freedom, as Thomas Jefferson so declared it in his masterpiece of the human condition.
I have always been a big fan of Realty Check, because no matter the issue or the humor sliced into arguments, it has always stood for those principles, and to castigate those who dare whitewash freedoms with their agendas, whether they be political, religious or otherwise.
Again, it is individualism that will prevail.
—David Pegrin
The nasty truth that goes along with Prop 8 is all the minorities who voted for Obama in 2008 flicked the lever for this horrible disenfranchisement of another minority. Many of them were Hispanic in California still beholden to the religious superstitions of their heritage, failing in their attempt to change history by voting for the first black man, but in doing so denied the rights of another minority; gays. Why this is not broached has nothing to do with the constitution but everything to do with a liberal, biased media and a gutless Democratic party that will get theirs in November.
—Lewis The Patriot
My favorite line about denying the rights of citizens is that the majority doesn’t want it.
Look at every injustice in the history of the world and in particular the history of its only long-lasting free society, America, and you will see that the majority at first did not want it. What majority opinion has to do with human rights is anyone’s guess, and let’s hope it isn’t idiots like Sarah Palin who are doing the guessing.
—Ms. Broderick D922 HA!
Mr. Campion,
Another great ran…er…intellectual monologue. (FREE SPEECH REDUX) There is another caveat in the long list of exceptions to free speech, which I’m surprised you didn’t mention: If you say anything that the Christian God would Not Approve Of, you obviously are ‘stepping away from the original intent of the framers of the Constitution,’ etc. This is a very sneaky and clever way to wed Patriotism to Godliness. Glenn Beck very recently skipped completely over the idea of political or intellectual discourse and headed straight to God, did not pass GO, did not collect his $200.
I would also like to use a hackneyed phrase often employed by the Moral Christian Right and say if we don’t build that mosque… the terrorists will have won! We will be giving away America!
Good luck with the goose shit.
—Jonathan Young, N. Kingstown, RI
These free speech diatribes are my favorite Campion moments. It is as if someone took electrical tape from your mouth and set you going. This should be your only subject to decipher. It is your danger zone, a wheelhouse of sorts. Despite so many other issues covered in Reality Check, where we read a more balanced approach, mocking the extreme visions of others, with free speech, any free speech, there appears to be no Campion wiggle room. It is all or nothing, which lends to not only great reads but also an insight to where your bottom line resides. It is a study in a sense into where the basis of your entire personal philosophy, to which you have denied in print exists, lies.
And no one I think knows how far the onion peels, but free speech, free expression and anything of the sort is unquestionably your Waterloo. It is your last stand.
Maybe it’s our last stand as a society, because I often look at fringe voices or independent, outside the mainstream columnists such as yourself, as being those lone warriors on the castle wall looking out into the wilderness, beyond civilization, as if you are guarding against the last attacks of the Huns. Your weapon? Free Speech.
Bravo.
Keep up your vigilant post. Someone must.
—VV Svenson
The reason the mosque issue has been brought up lies in the timing of the midterm elections. There is nothing like a good ol’ dragging out of the rusty wagons to once more circle round the flag of another useless cause. I swear the country must be in good shape if this is all we have to talk about.
Same goes with Dr. Laura. Another clown shoots their mouth off and we line up to feed from the trough of ignorance. As a society we have made such progress. Students in our schools, although pregnant, are very aware of right and wrong. We killed the smokers and got rid of the stuff that made eggshells thin. Why can’t we take the next step and eliminate the sensationalism that oozes from our screens?
—Peter Saveskie
My feelings were hurt when we invaded Iraq. Why didn’t anyone stop that?
—P. Romero
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey,” “Fear No Art,” “Trailing Jesus” and “Midnight For Cinderella.”
