Limits on Free Speech

The letter below rebuts letter writer Steven Grant’s Aug. 12 defense of the free-speech rights of controversial public figures such as comedians Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay and members of the Guns N’ Roses and Public Enemy bands. Grant argued that “too many times in America’s history, (the right of free speech) was abrogated because whoever was speaking wasn’t politically correct enough for whoever was defining political correctness at the time.”

Grant may be unaware that the U.S. Supreme Court, which interprets our laws and Constitution, has carved out exceptions to absolute free speech: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic” (1919).

And, like it or not, obscene material is not protected by free-speech rights (1957).

Likewise, some forms of offensive speech, like “fighting words” are not beyond restrictions. In upholding the “fighting words” doctrine, the court ruled in 1942 that words “which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of peace” may be purged from public dialogue.

To be called nigger , faggot , spic or kike might leave more enduring scars than a physical assault.

How we draw the line in today’s climate of increasing racial, sexual and ethnic insults may not be easy, but no one can say that speech is absolutely “free.”

MARSHAL ALAN PHILLIPS

Los Angeles