CELEBRATE, OR ELSE
A player for the Philadelphia Flyers recently declined to participate in a pregame LGBT+ celebration, and our self-appointed enforcers of “tolerance” quickly stepped in to demonstrate their intolerance.
Ivan Provorov said that he respected everyone and their choices and was only being true to his religion, but that didn’t stop one hockey writer from calling him “a shameful human being” and another from telling him to go back to Russia. TV commentator Sid Seixeiro demanded that the
NHL fine the Flyers
$1 million for “offending people,” with
“offense” apparently defined as allowing a player to keep to himself in the locker room.
We have now reached the point where you are not condemned for the things you do or say but for refusing to do approved things in lockstep. Keeping one’s own counsel isn’t sufficient; you must actively celebrate with sufficient (even if feigned) enthusiasm or be vilified in terms otherwise reserved for child molesters and serial killers.
It is important to note that Provorov didn’t assault a gay person or utter anything derogatory, or, for that matter, express any kind of opinion about LGBT+ issues. That he didn’t actually “do” anything is thus the point and the problem; silence or reticence of any kind is unacceptable.
You don’t have to do or say anything hurtful because failure to accept every LGBT+ demand is defined as hurtful.
Colin Kaepernick became a villain for some and hero for others for using his workplace to make a political statement; Provorov is being condemned for refusing to be used by his employers to make one.
A line is crossed from a liberal society to an illiberal one when we use coercion to force people to support things (in this case even celebrate them) that they oppose.
The ability to express unpopular opinions or to refrain from expressing popular ones goes to the very essence of what distinguishes a free society from an unfree one.
With respect to the more specific issue of celebrating the LGBT+ movement, the thought occurs that there is a rather large difference between endorsing some items on the agenda — gay marriage for instance — and endorsing others, such as allowing men pretending to be women to compete in women’s sporting events.
There are few movements that anyone would want to give open-ended, unconditional support to, and the caveats especially apply to one that is as broad, unspecified and evolving as the LGBT+ (as suggested by the + part).
The potential to withhold endorsement is especially important because the public is far from unanimous in its views when it comes to things LGBT+.
Some, as with Provorov, generally oppose it out of sincere religious conviction. Others, a probably larger number, accept some elements (gay marriage) but reject others. Some, out of genuine conviction or conformism for the sake of social acceptance, reflexively endorse everything it puts forth and will continue to do so (or at least pretend to) no matter how strange future demands might become.
The key is that it is entirely possible for people to hold different views because disagreement should be expected in a pluralist society, and “diversity” and “inclusivity,” properly conceived, would respect this.
Charles Cooke recently noted: “One of the greatest tricks that professional advocates have pulled in recent years is to pretend that their organization represents the pure distillation of a given cause — gay rights, black equality, free speech, conservatism, whatever — and that if anyone opposes it for any reason, they must oppose those things per se.”
Refusing to be conscripted under pressure on behalf of a political cause he doesn’t share doesn’t make Ivan Provorov a bigot; condemning him for that refusal does, however, make you a creep.
Bradley R. Gitz lives and teaches in Batesville, Ark.