A lady stood in front of the church entrance, and handed us a flyer.
“Are you Australian?” she murmured.
“Nope,” I replied.
“Please hand it over to some of your Australian friends. The vote is tomorrow,”
I stared closely at the flyer. The headline was:
“3 Ways Gay Marriage Will Impact Your Family”
The headline provoked me. One of the main points stated:
“Saying ‘yes’ to same-sex marriage means saying ‘no’ to freedom of speech”
…Wait. Whose freedom of speech are they talking about?
Photo Source: http://utdmercury.com/liberal-ideology-hypocritical-free-speech/
First of all, I am not talking about same-sex marriage. I am only criticizing – or feel the need to criticize – the scope of ‘free speech’ that has been adopted within Australia.
It is very clear that Australian’s human rights policy offers everyone a freedom of speech although at the same time, the stated article brought us to a vague understanding – to what extent do we have our ‘freedom’ to speak? I guess it only takes a pinch of common sense when ‘respect the rights or reputations of others’ is stated – or is it just me being a polite Indonesian?
If my common sense is not so common, how about drawing a line from Bolt’s case: how many times have been people like Andrew Bolt, a conservative Australian columnist, putting up a comment on other people’s free speech? I think up to this point, we need to help making the world fairer by ensuring freedom of speech belongs to everyone.
Some people made ‘freedom of speech’ sounds like it belongs to only a particular collective individual instead of the community as a whole nation, just because they are backed by larger groups. I mean, look at all those flyers created by a bunch of people from church association, tried to convince people that voting ‘yes’ would actually humiliate Australians’ free speech. Why can’t we give ‘freedom of speech’ to Australian LGBTs too?
A recent article by SBS on giving international students a chance to work seemed to irritate some local commentators on Facebook too. While the article itself is further away from being offensive, grounded by some logical narratives, the comments left on this particular post was amazingly brutal. Why can’t we respect the rights of others, really?
Another incidence of Andrew Bolt commented on Yassmin Abdel-Magied who recently joined a panel of professors in department heads in Australia National University was also staggering. Despite of him being racist by saying ‘black Muslim women’ and accusing Yassmin and other Muslims of demonstrating identity politics, who is actually trying to block whose freedom of speech, in this context?
This what might have triggered some biased thinking about who deserve to have the ‘freedom of speech’. Can’t we have a fair share of free speech and give everyone a chance?
Maybe wishing the perfect existence of ‘fair speech’ is delusional – not only within Australia, but also in other parts of the world. Maybe we can only dream that one day we will have a ‘free speech’ made for everyone. When the limit is only grounded by rule, not by the implicit phony called haters.
SundaySerenades 