Phobias and Free Speech

Suzanne Fields says this about free speech and our social phobias:

Freedom of speech is our most important right, forcing us to bounce ideas around in the sunlight. Most important of all, free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution is what makes everything possible.

But it's being undermined in ways that many of us don't always notice. The danger is not always government censorship or institutional taboos. We've medicalized speech about certain subjects, so that speaking about them renders the speaker to someone suffering from a disease that must be treated. Robust, roisterous and even rude debate is forbidden.

Phobias, as in homophobia, Islamophobia and even Christophobia, have entered the canon of diagnoses. By linking criticism with a phobia, we deprive the speaker of his right to speak; by classifying him as having an emotional disorder, we deprive him of independent thinking.

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We've come a long way in dispelling the stigma of mental illness and the "snake pits" that early mental hospitals often became. Now we risk diagnosing as disease what ought to be legitimate discussions of lifestyle, worldview and secular and religious values. Psychology begets a speech police. Insensitivity becomes illness. Debates over morality become debates over "disease."

Phobia dictionaries include everything from the ridiculous to the subliminal. My favorite is arachibutyrophobia -- fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth. But we should all be wary of laliophobia, the fear of speaking out. By diagnosing legitimate issues of public dissent and disagreement as phobic disorders, we all run the risk of suffering from that. And beware of peanut butter, even with jelly on a slice of Wonder bread.

Read the whole thing.