Katherine Kersten: Don't Take Away My Right to Be a Bigot

Katherine Kersten is scared. Canada legalized same-sex marriage and it became a little harder for bad people up north to maintain their outright bigotry. Using examples that don't really support her argument, she tries to ague that once same-sex marriage is legalized in Minnesota, the thought police will come to take her away for being a bigot. While the thought of that scenario makes me grin just a little, that's not the kind of society I want to live in. She can be a bigot all she wants, and I can keep pointing out how thoughless her writing is, and how hateful it is.

Her fears are completely unfounded. Freedom of speech is very broad in the US compared to Canada. You can still be a racist, or a nazi if you want to in the US. The KKK is an obvious example that, in the United States, you can hate as much and as vocally as you want. The rest of us also have the right to counter your speech.

So, a Canadian-American comparison doesn't quite work. Also, as a letter to the editor today points out, Kersten gets her facts wrong. One of the people who got into trouble in Canada wasn't scolded because he promoted "traditional marriage", it was for saying that gay people are evil. (I personally think he should have that right, but Canadians don't, and it's their country they can do what they want.) Kersten tries to make it sound like this guy was just a happy, tolerant person who was merely pointing out the benefits of "traditional marriage," but it's not the truth.

She also provides an example of a teacher who was put on a month suspension without pay after the school he worked for found his letters condemning gays in local newspapers. He insinuated that if gay students came to him for counseling, he would refer them to ex-gay ministries. All of this happened before same-sex marriage became legal in Canada, a detail that either Kersten didn't bother to research, or she intentionally left out to create false support for her argument.

Kersten will always be able to write bad things about gay people, even when same-sex marriage is leagl in Minnesota, although pretty soon no major newspaper will print her dishonest, gay-bashing garbage.