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Army Bob: Can we be jailed for using the wrong pronoun?

A headline from the Associated Press read “California criminalizes speech;” the AP story reported: “Violators of the provisions in the law could be charged with a misdemeanor, meaning that they could be fined up to $1,000 or jailed up to one year in California.”

Governor Jerry Brown, a confirmed progressive, was elated when he signed a law Oct. 6 criminalizing incorrect speech. Now to be fair, the law is narrow, and only criminalizes caregivers who have been warned to use the preferred gender pronoun for patients.

To the good folks on the liberal side, where are you hiding, the left, the progressives Americans who used to pride themselves on freedom of speech, and are now the leaders of an anti-free speech movement? This is insane; the left is celebrating jailing people for mere speech.

Any reasonable person would expect to see the media up in arms and burning up the editorial pages with protests of Fascists criminalizing free speech. The rub here is that the Fascists are the progressives in the most liberal state in the union. Free speech only works when it is a two-edged sword cutting right and left; again where are the self-appointed protectors of free speech, the media?

Health care workers who are told to refer to a person by a preferred gender and refuse should be fired, dismissed, sacked, canned, shown the door, but for God’s sake not jailed. Speech that is improper in a work place is grounds for all types of action: reprimands, demotions, reassignments, firing. But a year in a state prison has a chilling effect on our free speech rights.

The ACLU was, before the Bakke Case in which they represented a person in a reverse discrimination suit, the champion of free-speech. Bakke caused the ACLU to lose an enormous number of liberal members and funds; after Bakke they became the Progressive Americans Civil Liberties Union, only concerning themselves with the properly approved liberal issues. The ACLU is a corporation, a not for profit corporation sure enough, but it has bills and salaries to pay after all, and the bottom line is more important than free speech to any corporation.

The media, the ACLU, the colleges and universities who tell themselves they are the champions of free speech are deaf and dumb when it comes to reaction to this attack on free speech. It is because they agree with jailing Americans for politically incorrect thoughts and speech. The left has that right, but this is not merely a slippery slope it is an ice covered and vertical slope.

Very few people will ever be jailed under this law, so what harm does it do? Gender identification is an issue championed by the progressive media and the left in general, so people who use the wrong gender pronoun in referring to people should go to prison, right? Wrong, mere speech should not put an American behind bars, hurt feelings are not grounds for imprisonment and loss of freedom, dismissal certainly, but not imprisonment. Throughout history the most oppressive governments have been the socialist states and free speech died under the iron fist of total socialism. Governor Brown has proven how dangerous the progressive thought and speech police can be when not challenged by the so-called protectors of free speech.

Today pronoun use is criminalized, tomorrow it may be not standing for the National Anthem. Once again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Can you envision inmates in the California penitentiary system talking, one says they are jailed for attempted murder, the next for sexual assault, one for armed robbery and one for using the wrong gender pronoun? And the repressive, progressive left wonders why we have a President Trump.

9 Comments

  • No one is hiding because as you noted the law is narrow and specific. Its curious you’ve chosen to reire to a very Republican county in a very Republican state and are somehow driven to discover a law in a state you’ll probably never lve in to rail about. Its a state law, not a Federal law.

    I’m more concerned about a sitting President who wants to use libel laws to silence journalists by suing them and thet employer. Just as concerned when the same President talks about pullng broadcast licenses from affiliates of networks when they air stories the same President calls “Fake News” even when there is written and video proof of what he denies.

    Keep finding minutae to write about. Our county (Allegan) state and country have bigger issues than the alleged problem discovered in recent California law.

  • Criminalizing incorrect pronouns? How completely ridiculous. The right has no monopoly on wacky ideas. You’re right, Bob.

    • Mr. Basura,
      Sir,
      Thanks for the comment. Free speech is to vital to our democracy to be limited, improper gender pronouns or not standing for the national antrum must be protected speech. Left or right we need to protect our freedom of speech. Folks who say improper things could be fired but not jailed.

  • Mr. Couchman,
    Sir,
    Thank you for the comment.
    I lived in Marina California for many years, on Crescent street by the way. I have friends and family who still live in California. The Constitution of the United States is applicable in California as well as Michigan.
    Please send an application to the Town Broadast, the Editor just may give you his job and you can choose my topics, although he believes in free speech and allows me to freely choose the topics.
    So if a professional football player in Texas does not stand for the national anthem (the Supreme Court has ruled that some actions are protected speech) and is jailed it is no big deal, as it will not happen in Allegan County and some State law jailed them? Not in our country the country I served for decades.

  • I’ve just spent time educating myself on this issue, because I hadn’t heard of the CA law, and I am completely unaware that there are new (and sometimes confusing) pronouns that the transgender community has adopted.
    Although the law is very narrow, I think it has to be taken seriously. But let me be clear, I am not dissing the LGBTQ community. To paraphrase from an article from the nationalreview.com, compelled speech is not free speech. A law which punishes free speech is wrong. It is also wrong to ignore a person’s stated request to be called a particular pronoun. But it shouldn’t be reduced to legislation. I fear being misunderstood, but what I am suggesting is that common politeness ought to be the overriding concern here. If a transgender person has a preferred term of reference and makes that preference known, kind, open-minded people ought to respect that. Legislating it won’t make it so. Even legislation against hate speech hasn’t made it so. Boors will be boors. Legislation will only erode protection of free speech, no matter how much it may offend our sensibilities.
    I don’t identify protection of free speech as a left or right-wing cause. Any American who values the Constitution and the Bill of Rights needs to ponder the consequences of legislating which words we are allowed to use without legal repercussions.

    • Mrs. Mandaville
      Thank you for the comment.
      Caregivers who violate policy and are rude need to fired, but not jailed, I agree.

  • It’s worth checking out a psychology prof named Jordan B Peterson on this exact topic. There’s a similar law in Canada and he’s gone viral with his video objections to it. There are a couple of videos on my blog which give you a flavor.

    The man is a genius and has hundreds of hours of video available online that are apolitical and fascinating.

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