LAST WEEK, the University witnessed two events of similar stripe. On Monday, members of the Woroniecki family brandished a banner and posters, shouting messages such as, "You're cowards!" and "You're going to hell!" On Thursday, demonstrators from Life and Liberty Ministries, a pro-life group, appeared on-Grounds spewing similar epithets and flashing signs of mutilated fetuses. The University community could learn a few lessons from these protests in the veins of free speech, tolerance and stereotyping.
The Woroniecki family paraded around Bryan Hall and waved banners professing "Jesus says you must be born again; repent!" They yelled at students and faculty passing by in between classes with a fire and brimstone, doom and gloom message for several hours.
Life and Liberty Ministries embarked on it's "2005 Face The Truth Virginia Campus Tour" last week, stopping at James Madison University, Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, The College of William and Mary and some high schools, besides our own university. This radical group travels with a "truth truck," plastered with pictures of aborted fetuses, and handed out flyers of condemnation. According to eyewitnesses, one of the signs stated, "God hates the hands that shed innocent blood." The Daily Press reports that Life and Liberty supporters chanted, "Turn to Jesus, or you're going to hell" on William and Mary's campus.
The statements by the respective groups were outrageous by most standards, to be sure, but the groups nonetheless are entitled to their rights to free speech, just as the demonstrators at the ANSWER protest in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago had the constitutionally protected right to praise Slobodan Milsosevic and cheer for Hamas and Hezbollah. We must realize that in our push for a truly tolerant environment here at our University, we have to allow for extremist opinions of the minority. The Woroniecki's, rather than allowed their freedom of speech were met with police claiming they needed a permit -- which they did not .
However, this is not to say that the groups' statements shouldn't go without challenge or critique. A university setting should be a "marketplace of ideas" where all views should be put on trial for everyone to thoroughly examine, contest and judge. Some will argue that there should be no place for such opinions, but as John Stuart Mill reasons, if extreme views are never expressed, then how will we know which views are legitimate and valid? Exposure to radical sentiments, will, if anything, give us a compass to determine which views are logical. To censor these fanatics would do us all a disservice. As many have advocated the defeat of ideas such as racism with the weapon of well-reasoned arguments, so too will other fanatical views fall by the wayside when put to the rigors of fierce debate and a competitive multitude of compelling perspectives.
Another lesson that we can all take away from this: don't stereotype. It is the role of the University community to avoid grouping all people who hold pro-life and religious beliefs in the same category. Just as it would be ridiculous to make the argument that all people who support government health care are socialists or communists, or that all people who oppose the Iraq war think that President Bush should be assassinated, it is erroneous to make broad, sweeping generalizations about the pro-life and Christian community based on the demonstrations of a few on the fringes as some members of the community, including some letters to the editor, have done.
Conversely, members of the mainstream pro-life and Christian community should speak out vocally and proactively contribute to this marketplace of ideas in order to prevent mistakenly being lumped in with these militant organizations, as well as to provide strong, alternative opinions. It is incumbent upon them to distance themselves and confidently explain their positions and beliefs and differentiate between the tactics employed by the two groups and their own.
As a conservative pro-life Christian, I was embarrassed by the groups' overall approach and proclamations, as I felt that they detracted from the credibility of mainstream conservatism and Christianity. The groups' methods, although legal, were tasteless, insensitive, and self-righteous. But the only effective way to combat radicalism is with reason; let them have their soapbox, but engage in a healthy exchange of ideas and let rationality triumph.
Whitney Blake is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at wblake@cavalierdaily.com.
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