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Peter Tatchell: Don't Ban Eminem!
Is banning Eminem the most effective response?
I doubt it. Censorship would turn Eminem into a martyr. It would give him
the moral high ground. Instead of him being seen as the victimiser, he could
play the victim - and get public sympathy. In contrast, those who want to
censor him would end up looking intolerant and authoritarian.
This inversion of victim and victimiser is something to be avoided at all
cost. We must keep the focus on Eminem as the villain, and not do anything
to detract from that.
Pragmatic and tactical considerations aside, what is the morally right
response to his prejudice?
Freedom of speech is so precious that it sometimes means we have to tolerate
things we find offensive, including homophobia and sexism. By tolerate I do
not mean ignore or let pass without challenge. Not banning something is not
the same as condoning it or doing nothing. There are ethical ways of
countering queer-baiters like Eminem. But denying freedom of expression is
not one of them...
Detestable though his lyrics are, I feel duty bound to defend his right to
express his opinions. Why?
Once we start saying there are limits to freedom of speech, where do we draw
the line? And who draws the line?
If offensiveness is a criterion for restricting free expression, then lots
of people - perhaps Eminem and most definitely religious fundamentalists -
would find gay magazines, plays, books and films offensive. They would, on
the basis that they were offended, have to right to demand the censorship of
gay art, literature, cinema and theatre.
Equally dangerous, censorship gives the State the right to determine
morality. MPs and judges decide what is acceptable and what is not. That
sets a very dangerous precedent, because state institutions - such as
parliament and the courts - are invariably cautious and conservative.
Having only recently begun to escape from decades of stage and screen
censorship of homosexuality, we would be foolish to endorse any move that
might resurrect the power of the State to intervene in our lives - or the
lives of others.
Peter Tatchell,
London
Media Goons
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I detest the spineless, sold-out media goons who have created a conspiracy of silence around anti-Georgie Porgie protests. Middle America sleeps securely in the context of a stolen election, content with the mainstream media smokescreen that minimizes all that His Fraudulency has already got away with, in part because of the wishy-washy "Gotta be nice" wimpiness of many of my fellow Dems on Capitol Hill.
Not so oddly, we seem to be focusing on our ultimate scapegoats, i.e. the Clintons again, with that self-righteous Pharisee Dan Burton at it bashing the President's right to pardon whomever he chooses. Hey, dudes & dudettes, remember Caspar Weinberger, Ollie North etc? If the pardon spoils system exists for one party, surely it needs to exist for the other.
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Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
Quotes & Quips: A Grammy for Eminem?
Ranting About The Media:
Fascists Trying to Keep It Up
Rev. Tim LaHaye Puts
Left Behind on the Silver Screen
Related Sites:
Eminem
Left Behind
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Meanwhile, the mainstream media appears to be desperate to convince us that it's business as usual, and to cover up any anti-Dubbya protests. I commend you for drawing attention to the pissed off-ness of many of us, & hope you continue to be our journalistic conscience reminding Congress & this nitwit Texan President that not all of us, African-American & liberal White, lesbigay or rarely empathic straight, want to go along with the current program of appeasing the Thief .
Sincerely,
Raj Ayyar
Left Behind: The Movie
Never before have the motives of the producers of a motion picture been more transparent. Let's see: FIRST, they get every willing televangelist to hype this film as the greatest thing since sliced white bread. NEXT, they encourage as many fundamentalist Christians as possible to purchase copies of the film so as to recoup its paltry production costs and pump up its advertising budget. And FINALLY, when the film hits the theaters, get as many said Christians as possible to see it yet again, bus them into the multiplexes if necessary, NOT on the merits of the film itself, but because a #1 box office opening will be seen as some sort of profound spiritual victory.
One need only take a look at the customer reviews for Left Behind on the websites for Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. By recruiting hundreds of willing believers to their very own "Tribulation Force," the producers of this film have been able to orchestrate a campaign to flood these websites with gushing reviews and pleas to to fellow believers to turn out in droves when the film hits the big screen.
But THAT, of course, won't be enough. I imagine that any film critic with the audacity to give Left Behind anything short of a glowing review will be deemed "anti-Christian."
Of course, this shamelessly manipulative marketing campaign shouldn't surprise anyone. It is, after all, good old fashioned Capitalism at work. What DOES surprise me is how many people have been suckered into the whole "Left Behind" mindset. As someone who tries to balance his spiritual beliefs with some sense of reason and rationality, it leaves me scratching my head. It would appear that there are many, MANY people who actually believe that sometime in the near future a "Rapture" is going to occur, and that millions of people all over the Earth are going to simultaneously vanish INTO THIN AIR. What kind of reality, I wonder, are these people living in? Is this "Rapture" something they actually believe in, or is it something they fervently WANT to believe in? And when they reach the end of their lives and realize this "Rapture" has not occurred, will they be disappointed and disillusioned? Will there still be people 100 years from now insisting that the "Rapture" is imminent?
In a way, I almost wish that such an event would occur! What an interesting day that would be! What would be even more interesting is if the Apocalypse were to occur in a more spectacular fashion, not in the anthropological sense the authors of the Left Behind series have portrayed, but as more of a Stephen Spielberg production, with boiling clouds, trumpets, angels descending out of the sky, Moon turned to blood, the whole nine yards. Imagine coming to the realization that it was all coming true, just as the evangelists had been warning for years, and that there was something more awesome than just the cold, hard, physical reality we inhabit. Wouldn't THAT be something???
Yet in the final analysis, it's that cold, hard, physical reality that I will content myself with. My life is not so meaningless that I need the fear of a "Rapture" and the "End Times" to make sense of it all ... nor do I need Heaven or Hell to bribe or scare me into behaving decently, thank you very much.
Chuck Anziulewicz
Spring Hill, West Virginia
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Pen Points
