TO THE EDITOR:
I value decency.
By decency, I do not mean good morals. I mean decorum—saying the appropriate things at the appropriate time and holding your tongue even when your gut tells you otherwise.
It’s an old-fashioned, quaintly Southern idea, instilled in me by my religious, deep-South parents.
The world would be a better place if people were more decent; if people didn’t swear as much, if politicians had more conversations and fewer verbal fist fights, and if lone filmmakers didn’t make films blasphemous to Islam.
But we must remember that there is a time for indecency. There is a time, a place and a right to offend. That’s why I fundamentally disagree with Tuesday’s protest against the aforementioned film.
The film has indubitably engendered violence across the globe and protesting against this violence is laudable.
Yet we must not protest the film, for in protesting against art we protest against the artist, and it is vital that artists — that all communicative beings — have the right to offend.
The world is shaped into a freer, better place by offensiveness. The Civil Rights Movement was offensive. Homosexual behavior is offensive to many.
