I consider it a symptom of the disease of zealotry that so many Christians no longer understand exactly what “free speech” is anymore. (Yes, this is written partially in response to a couple of drive-by Christians who went that route.) It is the new favorite rallying cry used by Christians whenever they are not allowed to trample over others or are reined in in any way whatsoever. We’re going to talk briefly here about what it is, and why misunderstanding it is going to hasten the decline of a religion that deserves to decline.

Catchphrases and slogans are very big among fundagelical Christians. They always were–in my day it was “Jesus said it, I believe it, that settles it!” on the bumper stickers and “In case of Rapture this car will be unmanned!” Apologetics as a field thrives on these sorts of sayings–did you know that one of our biases, as humans, is to believe statements that rhyme over statements that do not? I don’t think it even has to rhyme necessarily. Quick, pithy, catchy phrases stick in our minds and sound more believable, especially to folks who aren’t skilled in critical thinking. So “Know Jesus, know peace/no Jesus, no peace” and sayings like it catapult into popularity very quickly, as do “were you there?” and a variety of other slogans Christians spout in lieu of actual good reasons to believe what they’re saying. I suspect sometimes that they soothe the otherwise-unbearable cognitive dissonance that extremist Christians experience when challenged.

A couple of years ago, when Christians realized they were solidly losing the whole anti-gay marriage fight that they themselves had started, I began hearing new catchphrases entirely: “religious freedom” and “freedom of speech.” Obviously these are not catchphrases in the sense that they’re actually part of our government’s underpinnings, but Christians were using these terms in very new and strange–and distinctly self-serving–ways, in the same manner that young children who are losing a game often try to suddenly change the rules of that game so that they have a chance to win again.

I think Christians are getting the idea from the forced-birther crowd who believe that a fetus’ supposed “right to life” supersedes even the rights that society rightfully gives to actual people and even to corpses (which cannot be violated, even to have organs harvested from them, without their owners’ explicit permission given before death). That’s a very old idea and one that likely got absorbed into toxic Christianity as their association with forced-birther groups got more and more entrenched and their conceptualization of “consent” got more and more eroded. The idea that one entity’s rights can and do supersede actual people’s rights has now bled into all sorts of other situations. And it goes along with the idea that some rights are automatically more important than other rights, like the “right to life” always superseding the right to bodily ownership and consent.

Having been a forced-birther myself at the time that these half-baked ideas were first getting popular, I can easily see how toxic Christians have applied the same illogical thinking to the misunderstandings of other great American rights.

Well, world rights, I reckon. It’s not just American, of course. The idea of free speech is recognized by a great many countries (though very few theocracies, helLO Christian Right Dominionists! Tell us again, would you, how wonderful a Christian theocracy would be and how you’d do it just right?). As this link demonstrates, freedom of speech is understood to have three components: the right to seek information, the right to learn information, and the right to share that information. Amusingly, as I look over that short list, I notice right away (did you?) that the Christians bellowing the loudest about “free speech” are the ones most interested in limiting these rights for others, all while painting themselves as the oppressed and marginalized minority.

Whoever started that catchphrase did a good job; it took off bigtime and almost immediately became the rallying cry for toxic Christians of all stripes. But the big problem with crying wolf–especially when it is done in such an obviously, patently self-serving way as that–is that not only are such Christians demeaning the very real persecution and suppression that people experience all over the world in theocracies and dictatorships, but they are making non-Christians that much less sympathetic to their own message by making false claims. Worse yet is the fact that these false claims get made to excuse and cover up Christian attempts to strip freedoms and rights from other people and to push themselves back into dominance. It’s abusive and it’s controlling, and it’s not hard to see.

Let’s be clear here: what these Christians are really saying, when they claim that they have some inalienable right to treat unconsenting people like they do, when they claim that their freedom of speech is being limited when they are merely asked to be civil, respectful, courteous, and fair to others, is that their religion requires them to behave in controlling and abusive ways and that they cannot hold their religious beliefs or practice their religion without overriding the consent of non-Christians.

They all act like the goal here in having this “religious freedom” is to “save the lost” and to further this nebulous conceptualization they have of their “god’s kingdom” on Earth. But from here, to me, it looks a lot more like the goal is for them to entrench their religious privilege into law before it is too late and they hit a tipping point in membership and power. They’re definitely not going to convert anybody with these tactics, and they’re definitely not doing anything Jesus commanded his followers to do. But I don’t think that’s what they’ve truly wanted to do for a long, long time.

And now they think they’ve found the magic incantation that will achieve their real goals. A pity for them–and a good thing for the rest of us–they’re flat wrong.

Freedom of speech is not a magic shield that protects Christians from all criticism and resistance, forces non-Christians to comply with their desires, or compels people to stand there and listen to them until they are damned well finished talking. I really believe that’s what drives toxic Christians craziest–that not only are people laughing at them, not only are people disagreeing with and challenging them, but most of us don’t really care what they do or don’t like or want anymore. They talk like they have this idea that in the recent past, everybody bowed to their ideas and cared what they had to say and listened to their advice and parent-like instruction, and then those meaniepie atheists and feminists took it all away from them. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I’m getting a little tired of dealing with Christians who chant magic spells like “free speech!” without understanding what those terms mean.

So without further ado, here is the Captain Cassidy Choose Your Own Adventure: Freeze Peaches. Did you ever play one of these? They were very popular when I was a kid. I had almost every one of them. My sister got into the TSR D&D-style CYOA books, but I was a purist. I still have a couple around here somewhere. They’re very easy to do. You read an entry, decide what you’d do, and follow the italicized instructions. You keep going like that till you reach an ending. Have fun!

1. Does what you said fall under the category of libel/slander, threats, or other specifically-illegal stuff like hate speech? If you’re not abusing anybody at all or breaking laws, continue to page 2. If you just want to spew hate speech and threats at marginalized groups without worrying about social repercussions, go to page 8.

2. Are you just upset that someone is challenging what you said? If you’re upset that someone is disagreeing with you, go to page 9. If that’s not the problem, go to page 3.

3. Is what you said either demonstrably incorrect, clearly a personal opinion, or an otherwise unsupported claim? If yes, go to page 10. If no, go to page 4.

4. Is the big problem here that you just don’t want to follow the same exact rules everybody else has to follow and don’t like being told to behave respectfully and courteously while you are on another person’s site or in another person’s space? If you’re sure that you’re following the same rules everybody else is following, go to page 5. If you just want more rights than everybody else gets and you throw tantrums when asked to behave yourself, go to page 11.

5. Is a government or government agent involved here? If yes, go to page 6. If you’re talking to another private citizen, go to page 11.

6. Is this government or government agent threatening sanctions against you for saying or writing things that aren’t hate speech and aren’t overt threats against anybody, or otherwise not enforcing laws that should protect you as you speak out or seek information? If yes, go to page 7. If no, go to page 11.

7. Congratulations! Well, if that’s the right word, anyway, because you might possibly be dealing with an issue of free speech. By all means carry on. You are perfectly within your rights to demand an investigation of this matter with the proper authorities over a possible infringement of your rights as a citizen of a secular country that values free speech. The End.

8. This is not a free speech issue. It’s actually you wanting to abuse people and get away with it. In 50 years you are going to be the laughingstock of this country. Until then, no, you do not get to abuse people in the name of your religion. (PS: Nobody but you is fooled by your desire to hate on people no matter how fervently you call it “love”.) The End.

9. This is not a free speech issue. Free speech does not give you the right to be uncontested or unchallenged in whatever you say. If you’re going to say it out loud or write it in a space that others can see and access, then other people are allowed to criticize it and assess it. (And by the way, nobody but you is fooled by your attempt to weasel out of the free exchange of ideas that free speech proponents would consider vital to the process.) The End.

10. This probably isn’t a free speech issue, but it might be depending on other factors. A sincerely-held belief that is simply objectively wrong is your right to hold. This is America. Americans can be just as uneducated, ignorant, misinformed, and deceived as they want to be. That said, nobody is obligated to give you a platform or to listen to you if they don’t want to. But guess what? It’s not illegal to be willfully ignorant as long as you’re not breaking any laws. It is still your right to lie, deceive others, or to discuss unpopular opinions. So this is not the end. You may continue to page 4–and hopefully you will remember that everybody around you is similarly allowed to hold their own opinions and decide to listen or not to whatever you have to say.



11. This is not a free speech issue. You’re just misusing big words you don’t understand. Privately-held blogs are not a government. Businesses are not a government. Comment threads are not a government. Being banned from a website does not curtail your ability to get your own damned site, blog, or soapbox upon which to stand and from which you can say whatever you want (barring hate speech and other specifically prohibited forms of verbal and written abuse, but hopefully nobody needed to clarify that point). Having to follow the same rules everybody else follows or being asked by a private citizen on a privately-owned site to conform to simple rules of courtesy and civility are not a violation of your right to free speech. (Also, nobody but you is fooled by your blatant attempt to force unconsenting people to interact with you and to force your religious views down unwilling people’s throats.) The End.

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All kidding aside, though, this weirdness Christians are pulling around free speech is, ultimately, going to backfire on them in the worst way possible. It’s one of those stopgap measures that seems like it’s going to work great at first, but then you look back at it in retrospect and wonder what you were thinking (like me thinking it’d be hilare rather than hugely difficult to make a CYOA post and also is it just me or does that acronym look a lot like CYA?).

It’s going to be awesome when toxic Christians discover that those who live by the false-persecution fantasy, fail by the false-persecution fantasy. The laws that protect my right to believe as I see fit are the same laws that will protect Christians when suddenly they are not a tyrannical majority–and they will have very good reason, on that fine day, to thank their god that they live in a civilized country that believes that all citizens should be allowed to believe as they see fit and which takes no sides whatsoever in the matter of religion and which values even dissenting and unpopular speech.

The laws that protect me now will protect them as well–in way fewer years than they’d like to contemplate, and in way greater ways than they’d like to consider right now.