Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness
Our kids are now at an age when they are very aware of current events. And they need us to help them try to make sense of this crazy world. Lately, this has not been an easy task. How do we as adults even begin to make sense out of the recent acts of violence in France? It’s even harder for my kids to understand, when all their lives they’ve been told “use your words”.
We explain to them that not all countries have freedom of speech. We explain that while we accept that other people have the right to say things that we disagree with — things that may offend us — however much we don’t like it, unfortunately this is not the case in other parts of the world where other people grow up.
This is what we tell our kids… But what I don’t share with my kids is how much I worry sometimes about the preservation and practice of the right to free speech right here in our own country, especially when I’m channel surfing and I see another so-called panel “discussion”, where people are just plain trying to shout each other down. Don’t these people know how to use their words?
But then there was a news story this week that was a beacon of hope, a story that embodied using your words in the best, goofiest way possible! I’m talking about what happened in Portland recently when the Westboro Baptist Church got up to their usual antics.
Portland Mercury, January 12, 2015
The series of events went something like this: The Portland Trail Blazers – in an exercise of free speech – had publicly endorsed a same-sex marriage initiative. The Westboro Baptist Church – exercising their right to free speech – decided to picket them. Then, the good folk of Portland decided to exercise their right to free speech as well and picketed them right back!
Portland Mercury, January 12, 2015
And the Portlandians did so with a huge dose of comic humor, I might add! (And cosplay, why not?) While some protest signs were on-topic, most were pretty random and said things like: “Zod hates Superman” and “Down with Pants!”. DJs even brought a sound system in for a dance party. And best of all, some clever individual set up a pledge website, turning the event into a fundraiser for protection of LGBT rights, dubbing the event a Protestathon!
Thank you, Portland, for this teachable moment. I will be sharing this news story with my children, with the takeaway message that this is how you respond to that which you find hateful: with a huge dose of humor!
After all, wouldn’t the world be a much, much better place if we all did that?
