THE UNIVERSITY'S chapter of the American Civil Liber-ties Union has, of late, come under attack for its involvement in the "NOT BLACK ... NOT JEWISH ... NOT FEMALE ... NOT GAY" flyers posted around Grounds. The ACLU's critics, objecting that the ACLU is violating its own principles and that the organization is attacking a white male majority, simply failed to do their homework.
Critics of the ACLU say that the organization shouldn't take policy positions because, after all, they are the champions of free speech and therefore support pretty much any speech short of a directive to murder another human being (and even then, who knows what the ACLU's particular stance is).
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But this is a silly objection to the ACLU's flyering. The ACLU stands for, among other things, free speech. That is not the same thing as standing behind the truth or rectitude of any statement made, even if its speaker has a right to say it. One need only turn to Skokie, the case in which the ACLU defended the Nazi party's right to march in a predominantly Jewish town. The ACLU took up the Nazis' case and chose as counsel a Jew, David Goldberger. The ACLU never had a pretense about the Nazis' speech being anything less than despicable, but they defended their right to speak hateful thoughts. In short, the ACLU is opposed to censoring ideas, but it freely censures them.
In that vein, the ACLU is doing nothing that is inconsistent with its principles by calling to task those who chant "Not gay." At the first moment that an attempt would be made, through force of law, to suppress the chant, the ACLU would be the first to oppose that. But until then, ACLU members do not need to sit tight in the face of very poor taste.
In fact, if it didn't criticize the chanters, the ACLU would be ignoring its first principles. The national ACLU Web site states: "The goal of the ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project is equal treatment and equal dignity for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals." There are two things to take from this. The first is that the ACLU is not just a free speech organization; it is a defender of an array of civil liberties - something its critics at the University forget or ignore. The second is that, if there is indeed an affirmative goal to realize equal dignity for gays and lesbians, then the ACLU simply is responding to a situation at the University that undermines the assumption of equal dignity.
The chant does just that. Nobody thinks that the University is predominantly gay, so to proclaim that we are "Not gay" couldn't just be a clearing up of the facts. And if it's not just getting things straight, it must be a statement of "otherness" and alienation, as though being gay makes you less of a full person, and that's the reason why we must proclaim we are not that. Thus, underlying the chant is an assumption of inferiority. This is precisely what the national ACLU stands against. Yet again, the critics get it wrong. Not only is the ACLU not violating its own principles, it's doing what its principles demand.
Some of the ACLU's critics have argued that the flyers identify white males as the culprit through their absence in the posters. So what? Add a "NOT WHITE" poster, which is equally offensive, and the point the ACLU is making remains.
The posters, however, do not identify any culprit. Looking at who is not featured is an oversensitive reaction to these posters, and that is assisting in drawing flatly wrong conclusions. Native Americans were not featured in a flyer saying "NOT NATIVE AMERICAN." So by the theory advanced by critics who say that absence indicates an assumption of guilt, the ACLU must be saying that Native Americans are raging homophobes. If you don't buy that that is what the ACLU is saying, then you ought not believe that the organization is pointing the finger just at white males.
The silliest objection to this flyering is that the ACLU would lose membership because people would see it overstepping its bounds here. However, the ACLU is not only not overstepping its bounds, but doing what it should be doing. So the membership it loses, if it loses any, would not be very informed members anyway. Still, the ACLU lost 30,000 members after litigating on behalf of the Nazis. Surely, it shouldn't fear losing the two or three University students that are petty enough to withdraw their membership because of their own misunderstanding of the organization of which they are a card-carrying member.
The ACLU's critics, if they're going to attack the ACLU for doing what it is doing, should be brave enough to say what they really mean: that they don't care about the chant. If that weren't the case, then they have very petty concerns about how a particular CIO is being managed. If you're going to tell other organizations how they should run themselves, at least get your facts right about that organization.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at jeisenberg@cavalierdaily.com.)
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