We often discuss the twisted logic used on campuses where faculty and students will profess support for free speech while censoring or canceling others from speaking. However, Fairfax Bar & Grill in Bloomington, Indiana, has taken this hypocrisy to a truly impressive level. The bar recently declared that it supports free speech so it will throw out anyone who criticizes Anheuser-Busch or BudLight for its campaign featuring transgender figure Dylan Mulvaney. Owner McKinley Minniefield told Newsweek “I won’t tolerate hate speech, and I think that’s where I draw the line.” It is that easy, you just declare opposing views to be hateful and then ban them from the bar.
The logic of Minniefield is so conflicted that it is enthralling. On Facebook, the bar posted the following:
“We are tired of all of the hate. We are very open to debate and discussion and it’s truly a shame that we can’t have open conversations about this important political and cultural topic. Bars, in our opinion, exist as public spaces where ideas should be exchanged. Unfortunately, due to all of the bigotry and hatred that has surfaced around the Bud Light controversy, any patron wanting to voice their concerns about the issue will be immediately asked to pay their bill and leave our establishment.”
Just to repeat: “We are very open to debate and discussion . . . any patron wanting to voice their concerns about the issue will be immediately asked to … leave our establishment.”
Minniefield added later
“We do not and will not censor opinions, but we do require civility in this establishment. So if you can’t play nice, then get out of the sandbox. That goes for everyone! Let’s remember why we even gather at a bar — to enjoy each other’s company — and raise a glass to civility.”
According to his policy, “playing nice” means not voicing an opposing view on this controversy. Yet, being tossed out of the bar is not considered censoring an opinion.
Notably, the ban is not on those who are shouting or engaging in disruptive conduct. It is anyone who “voices their concerns” about the transgender campaign.
Clearly, the bar has a free speech right to set such standards. Heck, we just discussed a bar that faced a boycott from the left over showing a Harry Potter game. It solved the problem with a cringing apology and promising to ban any Harry Potter images. This is not a denial of the right of the bar owner to impose his own views on patrons, but a criticism in how that right is being exercised.
Notably, many of the same people defended the right of players to kneel during the national anthem as an exercise of free speech. Yet, some support this bar tossing out those who express opposing views on the Bud Light controversy. What is maddening is for Minniefield and the bar to do so in the name of free speech.
All businesses and sites face tough choices in what to remove in terms of speech. Many blogs and newspapers like The Hill have now eliminated comment sections because it is too much work to monitor and make these decisions. On this blog, we use a WordPress system to remove profanity. We also remove a narrow range of threatening, doxing, or offensive content. However, we tend to allow a far greater range of speech than most sites, including speech that we find personally offensive and wrong.
The line drawing can be challenging. For example, most would agree that someone using racist or anti-Semitic attacks in reference to another patron should be asked to leave. However, it would be more problematic to toss out someone who is making a comment that is deemed inherently racist or intolerant. Such judgment can be highly subjective and biased.
In this case, the use of transgender advertising campaigns raises a host of issues for customers. I understand how many view this as an objection to the status of Mulvaney and a denial of her identity. However, there remains a major debate in society over the involvement of corporations to push such social agendas. We have to be able to discuss these issues. Indeed, I can imagine no more appropriate forum for discussing the Bud Light controversy than a bar. If a patron becomes loud and disruptive on either side of that debate, the bar has every reason to issue a warning and, if necessary, ask the patron to leave.
As discussed earlier, this Orwellian logic is being used widely on our campuses. Years ago, at Rice University, I debated NYU Professor Jeremy Waldron who is a leading voice for speech codes. Waldron insisted that shutting down speakers through heckling is a form of free speech. It is not. It is a rationalization for stopping certain views from being voiced or heard in higher education. CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech. (Bilek later cancelled herself and resigned). Even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech.
So now bars are claiming that being tossed out for expressing your views on Bud Light is not censorship. It is merely “enjoying each other’s company.” It is more enjoyable without you sharing your opinion. So much for Bud Light’s slogan that it is “the perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary.”
And now a word from neuroscience researchers in the Netherlands, as reported by the science journal, Nature. Free link to original published research paper
Abstract
Both transgenderism and homosexuality are facets of human biology, believed to derive from different sexual differentiation of the brain. The two phenomena are, however, fundamentally unalike, despite an increased prevalence of homosexuality among transgender populations. Transgenderism is associated with strong feelings of incongruence between one’s physical sex and experienced gender, not reported in homosexual persons. The present study searches to find neural correlates for the respective conditions, using fractional anisotropy (FA) as a measure of white matter connections that has consistently shown sex differences. We compared FA in 40 transgender men (female birth-assigned sex) and 27 transgender women (male birth-assigned sex), with both homosexual (29 male, 30 female) and heterosexual (40 male, 40 female) cisgender controls. Previously reported sex differences in FA were reproduced in cis-heterosexual groups, but were not found among the cis-homosexual groups. After controlling for sexual orientation, the transgender groups showed sex-typical FA-values. The only exception was the right inferior fronto-occipital tract, connecting parietal and frontal brain areas that mediate own body perception. Our findings suggest that the neuroanatomical signature of transgenderism is related to brain areas processing the perception of self and body ownership, whereas homosexuality seems to be associated with less cerebral sexual differentiation.
Burke SM, Manzouri AH, Savic I. Structural connections in the brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation. Sci Rep. 2017 Dec 20;7(1):17954. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-17352-8.
“it will throw out anyone who criticizes Anheuser-Busch or BudLight for its campaign featuring transgender ”
TRANSLATION :
I support the bud light transgender position. I will not accept any critics of it in MY bar. You got a problem with that, I don’t need or want your money. Find another place to drink.
Accept the challenge. Find another place to spend your money.
So you are gay?
Keep me posted on how their sales numbers drop!
Word for free speech… Now shut up!
Replace the phrase/word “HateSpeech”withe the word “EmotionSpeech”. Now try that thought on for size. Since WHEN do regulations and the LAWS apply to internal EMOTIONS?
The freedom of speech is absolute.
“Hate speech” laws are unconstitutional.
America has no Supreme Court Justices serving under their sworn oaths to support the literal, clear and evident, meaning and intent of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court Justices who have failed to fulfill their oaths when their actions are compared to the text of the Constitution must have been impeached and convicted long ago.
Example, abortion was never a constitutional right but an issue left to be legislated by States.
George, you are absolutely right.
Ah yes, because first and foremost on my mind, upon entering a drinking establishment, is to wax poetically on a controversial topic. Entering into serious debate while consuming alcoholic beverages. Yep! That’s the reason I go drinking!
/sarcasm <—( tagged for the Left who are entirely lacking a sense of humor )
“A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it’s a fear society.” ~ Natan Sharansky
“Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his views?”
– Al C. Biades
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It is understood that the man walking into the town square is positively identified.
A related question:
May a person visit this locus completely incognito, employing the moniker, ANONYMOUS, as a nom de déguisement and be allowed to express his views?
Those dastardly ANONYMOUS commenters on this blog never “walk into the middle of the town square.”
BAN ANONYMOUS FOR LIFE!
Proper response to order to leave is, “You can order me to leave, or stay and finish and pay bills, but not both.”
This triggered clown is perfectly entitled to talk his business. If I lived close by, I’d help.
Frankly, we should boycott ALL products from Anheuser-Busch… until they renounce their advocacy for deviancy.
So, the Fairfax is a gay bar now…?
Epic.
Joe Rogan is not wrong tho’
Anyone who has been to Cape Cod Massachsetts as a tourist probably made a trip to visit Provincetown out on the very end of the cape. P-town for a long time now has a majority population of gay men and lesbian women. Before all this woke crap showed up strait people would go to P-town not in spite of the gays and lesbians but because of them. P-town has a lot of nice restaurants and quaint shops to by stuff in. But the gays and lesbians were also, believe it or not a tourist atttaction. Years back some of the flamboyantly gay men started to put on an impromptu drag show. This staryed to attract morr tourist. This would take place right in the middle of town on Commerce St. Aftet the show some of the tourist would want their pictures taken with members of the cast. Now, this was 25 to 30 years ago. What the hell happened since then. What has changed with people since then?
those same drag queens doing their drag thing in front of children is what happened!
This bar owner probably just received a huge inventory of bud lite. Now he’s got to move it. Good luck.
This is good news. Let them go broke. It’s as simple as that. Although I do wonder about what happens when we ban them…suddenly the legal system will come up with a reason why that’s illegal.
Ah, it’s just a little place out in the country, well outside of town. They wanted to virtue signal a little, maybe get some I.U. gender-indeterminate students to make the drive out and drink some beer. Leave them alone, we don’t have to argue over every little thing that happens in the world. The internet makes us aware of way too much.
I wonder how this bar owner felt when he realized he is a fascist? On second thought, yawn!!
If the bar owner is a fascist, what was “Il Duce?”
Hysteria and incoherence; just what America needs.
The bar-owner should have invited Trump supporters to buy the beer first, and then let them pour it out in a yuge barrel to protest. He would have lines down the street.
Had AB followed the example of Seven Up Diet commercials with Geraldine Jones, a black “trans”, they would have been wildly successful. Kudos to Flip Wilson for being a wonderful black icon who died way too young
Estovir——-LOVED that guy! His show was so fun to watch…before the insanity of race-baiting became trendy, and rewarded!
Trump is a liberal, you fool!
What do you imagine would happen if America had George Washington et al. again?
Have you ever read that eminent document of conservatism, the U.S. Constitution?
Liberals are fine. Look up definition of classic liberalism. You probably are one. It’s the LEFTISTS that are the problem.
Yes. Right wing in American politics is classically liberal and far right is more conservative.
MAGA is a positive populist which is center right, as is libertarian. Calling them far right is leftist propaganda.
Democrats are leftist.
Can’t imagine why you would equate Bud Light boycotters to Trump. Trump was one of the first to help legitimize the Trans Cartel, overruling the organizers to let a transgender contestant in the Miss Universe pageant.
I can’t understand the continuing debate about this place’s policy. They have retracted their original position (after losing regular business) and have walked their position back to welcoming all sides or viewpoints regarding Budweiser Light. If the establishment owners felt it was proper to change their position, that’s up to them.
No, I do not watch Fox News (nor any network news whatsoever). We do not have cable or over the air network television available in our home, period.
Where have they “retracted their original position”? Sounds like their position is unchanged, they’re just unhappy about losing customers.
“Can’t discuss racist views here.”
Oh yes, we can. But *civilly*. Don’t *froth at the mouth*. Be polite. Or at least, please, clever.
For me, I opine that almost all of the Good Ideas throughout history are of Indo-European origin. If that is ‘racist’, so be it.
Better, show me wrong if you can.
“For me, I opine that almost all of the Good Ideas throughout history are of Indo-European origin.”
– DB “Cooper” Benson, He of High Intellect and Capacity
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Yeah, like the Kama Sutra!
My man!
David,
I can show you wrong.
Writing. Uruk in Sumer.
Actual civilization. Eridu and Uruk in Sumer.
Mathematics. Sumer
Written law code. Narim Sin and, later, Hammurabi.
Irrigation. Uruk in Sumer.
The first written story. Gilgamesh [there was one earlier but I don’t remember it] Sumer.
In modern times the Jews, particularly in physics, and they, like the Akkadians in Mesopotamia are Semitic, not Indo-European, together with East Asians.
But, above and beyond, I think you may be right about Indo-Europeans. They seem to have invented the modern world and now are in the process of tearing it down.
The far-Left trolls are active today