The Real Censorship

It's actually a very nefarious form of censorship. It's in the form of personal insults. It works like this: One of the earliest posts I put on this blog was about gay marriage, long before the brouhaha erupted in California over Prop. 8. Someone that I know, actually, a dear friend, read the post, didn't agree with it and posted a very insulting comment.

Now, I believe that this person didn't "intend" to insult me... it was a backhanded slap... but it was insulting. It went something like this - "I can't believe, with your education and knowledge, that you could actually believe that" (I'm paraphrasing, of course). This is roughly translated, "are you actually an idiot?"

Well, no one likes to be called an idiot, much less anything like bigot, racist, xenophobe, etc... Just read the news of the last year to get a rough idea of the kinds of labels people are getting for their opinions on matters.

So, when it comes to addressing matters of controversy, such as gay marriage, affirmative action, etc., the way to keep most people silent about how they feel about such things is to brandish such epithets. They are a powerful weapon and many people in our political leadership know very well how to use them.

This is not government sanctioned censorship - and it's much more effective as it definitely chills discourse.