Pastor: Vile nonsense about gay, trans people being normalized. Proud Boy visit a symptom
Rev. Neil Elliott is an Episcopal priest and biblical scholar. As Episcopal chaplain at the University of Minnesota, he and other ministry colleagues were recognized with the university Equity and Diversity Office’s Breaking the Silence Award in 2004.
I share retired civil-rights attorney David R. Hoffman’s concern regarding the threat of creeping fascism in our nation.
He was prompted to write a guest column in response to the heavily armed group of Proud Boys members and supporters that show up earlier this month outside a Columbus school where a drag story time was scheduled.
On one point, however, I think his column needs clarification.
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Hoffman describes the “heckler’s veto” as a “bedrock principle” of free speech law. The writing here is a bit muddled.
The bedrock principle is that law enforcement must protect free speech.
When a “heckler” so threatens the safety of a speaker that authorities don’t think they can perform that duty and cancel or close down the speech event, the heckler enjoys a “veto” enforced by the authorities themselves.
But this is not a “bedrock principle." It is a fallback measure required when the police have failed to protect free speech.
Hoffman is quite right to express alarm that extremists threatening violence — like the heavily armed military cosplayers who showed up to intimidate the “Holi-drag Storytime” performers and attendees — are becoming increasingly normalized.
In this particular case, police did not close down the event (as in Hoffman’s “heckler’s veto” scenario); the organizers did — after what some of them described, with frustration, as the “casual, distant acknowledgment” of their very real concerns by police.
Officials have denied this characterization.
Ginther: Proud Boys threats to drag storytime, school were taken seriously from start
But they have had to defend video of a police officer high-fiving armed Proud Boys as a “dialogue” officer just doing his job. (Dispatch columnist Tom Decker suspected the “hint of a smile” on the cop’s face belied that easy out.)
No video has yet emerged of police officers offering cheery greetings to storytellers in drag — ostensibly and legally the people they are sworn to protect.
I am not holding my breath.
Theodore Decker:Might I suggest that Columbus police no longer high-five extremists
Matthew Valasik: Boisterous armed white supremacist street gang out maneuvered Columbus police
A distasteful ensemble
What has characterized actual fascism and totalitarianism historically is a close tacit coordination between police forces and organized civilian gangs who enjoy relatively more freedom to harass, intimidate, and terrorize a targeted minority.
The Proud Boys are in this sense most like the Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany — though without their ability to coordinate outfits.
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(Indeed, photos of the Proud Boys assembled in their rag-tag military-surplus gear suggest they are most provoked by the ability of drag performers to actually put together a tasteful ensemble.)
Hoffman is very right to decry the “normalization” of extremism in today’s political landscape, though he shies back from naming names.
Normalizing vile and absurd nonsense
We can specify that it is the Republican Party that has declared the deadly insurrection at the Capitol “legitimate political discourse.”
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Republicans in public office have posted images and videos depicting deadly violence against their Democratic colleagues. Republican candidates have campaigned with ads depicting heavily armed paramilitaries smashing into private homes “hunting” their political enemies.
Republicans, and their media enablers, have embraced and promoted the vile and absurd nonsense that gay and trans people, just by presenting themselves honestly in public, are “grooming” children for sexual abuse.
(Most sexual abusers of children are close members of their victims’ families, not strangers.)
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Meanwhile, Republicans in Ohio — in the legislature, the attorney general’s office, and the courts — have exerted themselves to ensure that carrying semiautomatic weapons in public is a sacred right, far surpassing the right of children to go to school, or any of us to gather anywhere, with the presumption of safety.
Hoffman’s recommendations — such as the prohibition of carrying a weapon in protest, or holding those who incite others to violence responsible—are sensible.
They also appear impossible wherever today’s GOP holds sway.
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Rev. Neil Elliott is an Episcopal priest and biblical scholar. As Episcopal chaplain at the University of Minnesota, he and other ministry colleagues were recognized with the university Equity and Diversity Office’s Breaking the Silence Award in 2004.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What is the risk of spreading vile and absurd nonsense about drag queens?
