You may have noticed the Michigan Catholic farmer
claiming his First Amendment rights have been infringed
to speak his mind
about the degenerative nature of same-sex marriage
when the nearby East Lansing operated Farmer’s Market
determined his farming operation
was not in compliance with a city ordinance
not allowing discriminatory business practices.
The East Lansing City Manager
cited their city’s civil rights ordinance,
including sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes
in “all business practices.”
Notice the cross talk about rights and freedoms
and rights to freedom here.
The farmer claims his right to speak his mind
has been denied.
Yet the Mayor says it is the City’s right
to not engage in commerce
with those whose minds
are not inclined
to protect rights of free sexual orientation and gender identity.
The farmer can believe any supremacist thing he chooses,
and is equally free to speak aloud his mindlessness,
but this gives him no right to demand access to that market
he would prefer remain suppressed.
There is all the difference between rights of free speech
and rights of freedom from restricted actions.
Saying you do not believe in equal civil rights
for all God’s multiculturing children
is protected,
to act in defiance of those protected civil rights
is not protected.
You are within your freedom protecting rights
to believe some people would be better off dead,
yet this is a right of free speech,
not free implementation,
not freedom of action,
not freedom to deny another’s freedom to live
in some way that neither intends, or actually does,
threaten your right to live and say
whatever non-freedom impinging way you choose.
We all have protected freedoms of thought
and opinion
and feeling
and comment
and verbal expression,
but this is does not extend
to economic and political participation rights
to deny others’ freedoms of thought
and opinion
and feeling
and democratic comment
and verbal and nonverbal expression
with no intent to economically victimize or
politically marginalize,
certainly not criminalize,
you.
And all of this perhaps rather misses a more fundamental point.
In a multicultural, multigenerationally-intended,
sustainable democratic climate and landscape,
rights to defend protected freedoms
of expression
were originally intended,
and are more healthily continuously extended,
within a more positive context
of protecting rights to speak of what brings you
a sense of hope and promise,
to speak of what you are for;
and really not so much
about what we are more monoculturally against,
especially in some aristocratic-elitist-supremacist-royalist
non-democratic divisive and competitive way
that builds higher walls between Earth’s MultiCulturing Tribes
and Species
all co-invested in more cooperative climates
and landscapes
and policy discussion frameworks
and ecopolitics.
The right to own property,
including guns
and your own speech,
implies your neighbors’ right to own property
without threat of pollution from your property,
including your violence
and your uncivil speech.
