Minors and First Amendment Rights: Replies
Heins, Marjorie
ir LSHTAIN AND ETZIONI respond to my argument for minors' First Amendment i rights with the same highly charged rhetorical devices that have brought our culture to its current state of hysteria...
...Democracies recognize the rights and interests of children and adolescents precisely because of their respect for human dignity and diversity...
...Etzioni's accusation that I disfavor parental guidance of children's reading or other media consumption is thus totally off base...
...Etzioni is also wrong in implying that the ACLU's successful lawsuit challenging a public library's installation of Internet filters interfered with parental choice or with the "protection" of children under twelve...
...ir LSHTAIN AND ETZIONI respond to my argument for minors' First Amendment i rights with the same highly charged rhetorical devices that have brought our culture to its current state of hysteria over the need to "protect" youth from presumably harmful speech...
...Etzioni's defense of parents' role leads to his next error: his assumption that V-chips and Internet rating and filtering systems are exercises in parental choice...
...Substituting gratuitous insult for reasoned analysis, they contribute little new to the debate...
...If this is not what Elshtain and Etzioni advocate—if they do accept that minors are entitled to First Amendment protection —they utterly fail to explain what restrictions they think are justified, for what age groups, and why...
...Etzioni would apparently give parents carte blanche to "develop a child's character" in whatever manner they choose...
...but of course it is civil libertarians who have long been the primary defenders of parental autonomy against the interventions of a protectionist state...
...Indeed, under Elshtain's standards of bad speech ("junk and trash talk") versus good speech ("serious political and civil discourse"), she herself would apparently censor much "political and civil" debate because it is not sufficiently "serious...
...Wouldn't it be better—as Etzioni indeed suggests—to help youth "learn to deal properly" with troublesome issues in art and entertainment through education...
...Elshtain agrees that removing Márquez or Angelou from high school libraries "makes little sense," but she does not explain what system she has in mind for distinguishing their works from the "Nazi hate sites" she would block...
...They are legitimate because these categories of speech cause direct, tangible, and focused harm...
...In fact, they are exercises in parental abdication—of the responsibility to know and discuss with youngsters what they are reading and viewing...
...More important than Etzioni's carelessness, though, is his failure to specify what "media imagery" or type of "harm" he has in mind...
...MARJORIE HEINS is writing a book on whether censorship is necessary to protect kids, to be published by Hill & Wang in 2001...
...It is precisely the difficulty of fashioning a censorship system that does not end up suppressing Marquez and Angelou that underlies my argument in favor of free speech for youth...
...Is the United Nations, with its Convention on the Rights of the Child, likewise to be condemned as uncivilized...
...Elshtain objects to the word censorship, but it merely means restrictions based on the content of expression, which she and Etzioni clearly favor...
...It is true that at some point—as I think even Elshtain and Etzioni would agree— youngsters do have rights against their parents (cases of physical abuse, for example...
...Authoritarian" societies, he says, treat children as adults...
...Thus, in their scheme of solicitude for youth, minors could be expelled from school for wearing armbands, publishing independent newspapers, writing bawdy jokes on their Web sites, visiting a disapproved Internet venue, or reading a banned book...
...Laws against obscenity or indecency, on the other hand, or mandatory Internet filters that block expression touching on violence or sex, are based on generalized notions of moral or symbolic harm...
...It is precisely this habit of sweeping generalization, this failure to recognize the complex, varied ways in which the culture combines with other influences on human behavior, that has led to V-chips, Internet filters, and other blunderbuss censorship devices as symbolic non-solutions to social problems...
...In an illogical ad hominem, he adds that "no civil libertarian" should interfere with parents' rights in this area...
...civilized" ones treat them as a "distinct legal and moral category...
...Viewing free expression and access to diverse ideas as conducive to the development of critically thinking democratic citizens is hardly characteristic of authoritarian regimes...
...On the contrary, my article says that "recognizing the power of catharsis" is "not intended to deny the obvious fact that the media do influence attitudes...
...Where we differ is on whether nurturance and guidance necessarily include censorship, on the value of free expression to both individuals and civil society, and on the extent to which parents should be able to inculcate values that depart from majoritarian standards...
...my point is that no such godlike agency exists, as the history of censorship demonstrates...
...Who is to look over the shoulders of the thousands of filtering company employees or Web industry monitors to assure that they don't censor the antiSemitic sentiments of Ezra Pound and T.S...
...Elshtain and Etzioni assume that some institution or agency will make the right distinctions (in accordance, of course, with their tastes and judgments...
...Laws against defamation, invasion of privacy, threats, and harassment are also in my view legitimate forms of censorship...
...But Dostoevsky's novels, like many others, contain riveting descriptions of violence and mayhem...
...Does the Supreme Court's recognition of minors' First Amendment rights in the 1969 black armband case render the United States an "authoritarian" or "uncivilized" society...
...Eliot along with other "hate sites"—or, for that matter, information about the Holocaust, gaybashing, slavery, or lynching...
...He attempts to distinguish a reading of Dostoevsky (presum8o DISSENT / Fall 1999 ably safe) from "the Hemlock Society's howto books...
...I am not an absolutist, however...
...On the contrary, it is censorship devices, whether criminal laws or Internet filters installed in schools and libraries, that deprive parents of choices...
...Is Etzioni so sure that his vulnerable teenager won't get bad ideas from Dostoevsky, the Bible, The Silence of the Lambs, or The Merchant of Venice...
...The oversimplified dichotomy with which Etzioni opens his reply is equally inaccurate...
...indeed, the term has little meaning in the free speech context...
...82 DISSENT / Fall 1999...
...Neither I nor the civil liberties community is guilty of violating parental rights by pointing out the many defects of rating and blocking technology...
...and they blocked a vast amount of valuable online material for adults as well as minors of all ages...
...Extortion, bribery, perjury, and employment discrimination—all accomplished through speech—are not protected by the First Amendment...
...It is authoritarian societies that are more likely to impose censorship in the interests of "protection...
...HERE, WE THREE seem to agree that education —"nurturance and guidance," in Elshtain's words—is the best way to develop critical thinking and moral judgment in young people...
...The question that my article poses—and that Etzioni and Elshtain ignore —is whether, if the "harm to minors" that is thought to flow from controversial, disturbing, or "trashy" ideas is fundamentally moral or symbolic, would not education, nurturance, and guidance be more likely than censorship to produce responsible, open-minded citizens...
...But these mechanical filtering devices are imaginary quick fixes, in which large, vague categories of expression, including much that we would probably agree is valuable, are hastily if not mindlessly (in the case of keywords) blocked from view...
...but they do illustrate the emotionalism and failure of careful line-drawing that has led to the present impasse...
...Etzioni, for example, inaccurately claims that in discussing catharsis I fail to acknowledge the "numerous studies showing that children are indeed harmed" by "media imagery...
...She does not explain how the suppression of hateful ideas will advance the moral and intellectual development of young people or— the question at the center of my article—who is to make the judgments, in a censorship system, about which images and ideas have political, artistic, or sex-educational value, and which do not...
...The tendency of politicians and spin doctors to blame such complex phenomDISSENT / Fall 1999 81 ena as the mass killing at Columbine High School on rock music, television, or video games is a disturbing development in American political culture precisely because it is more characteristic of authoritarian than democratic thinking...
...When not excoriating me as an authoritarian, Etzioni and Elshtain brandish an epithet that, in our current political climate, is perhaps even worse—"First Amendment absolutist...
...People in a "distinct legal and moral category," however, still have rights, as I hope even Etzioni would agree...
...IF ANYTHING, Etzioni has it backward...
...For, in what is the grossest of their distortions of my argument, Elshtain and Etzioni accuse me of trying to interfere with parental autonomy...
...The filters in that case—mandated by Loudoun County, Virginia—were an exercise in governmental fiat, not parental choice...
...Etzioni's example of a suicidal adolescent also illustrates the problem...
...In a similar triumph of rhetoric over analysis, Elshtain conjures up "images of slaughtering members of minority groups on the basis of Nazi ideology" as an argument forwhat...
...As far as one can discern from their overwrought prose, Elshtain and Etzioni would deny minors any free expression rights...
...Should a minor be able to override her parents' choice to withdraw her from school after eighth grade (the situation in the 1972 Wisconsin v. Yoder case involving Amish parents...
Vol. 46 • September 1999 • No. 4
