Yes, in the very back there. Wait for the microphone. Safe foundation. Sir, i was impressed with your presentation. Now, i have a more fundamental question about the government of the United States and the people who control this country, the right and the left both together. Now, the kind of activities we are engaged in at this time, the spying on american citizens, the entire war crimes that we are committing all over the world, all these things, 20, 30 years from now we will be very, very ashamed as we are ashamed of the things that were being done in the 50s and 60s by those who controlled our government. How do we change this . We are continuously doing such tremendous amount of activities which are inhuman and barbaric. One of the themes and we could have a separate discussion of how bad the conduct of one or another American Government is at any given time, but i think one of the themes that we bring out from today is that if you cant speak freely about, it you cant document it, and you wind up wondering decades later you wind up wondering how bad was the governments conduct because they wont let you into the documents that let you find out. Now, we found out some unpleasant things about how the fbi operated, and yet when we open the files of agencies like that, it also exonerates them from other things that we thought they might have been doing bad. So weve gone down a long road of openness in government. It has benefited, you know, the fiscal interests of avoiding waste, but it has been tremendously beneficial to correcting the mistakes of both domestic and foreign policy. I would just add that the premise for your question illustrates the need for eternal vigilance, that these fights never end, that you have to continue to look at where rights are being restricted in one way or another, and also since you mentioned the nsa, it indicates why it is so critically important that we have access to information about what the government is doing. The foyer requests for what the fbi was doing in the 50s, finally bringing that information to light, is critical, and with the nsa and the way Edward Snowden finally brought to light the idea that the government is doing many things that we arent aware of. Now its comforting i suppose in a way to hear National Security officials say, oh, its very good we have this debate now. I tend to look at it in a somewhat different way, its usually better to debate things before the government starts doing them to you, but at least were having that debate now. And i would add, i think thats a really great point that you raise, sir, and, you know, it really underscores the work that the mad Sheen Society of d. C. And mcdermott are doing together. Mico hastings, who is the curator and librarian at the university of michigan Clements Library said the following and i think its relevant to your point. In preserving documents and records, archivists have enabled the documents to be revisited and reinterpreted as each era of history reshapes the collective memory. Now, she was talking about the internment of japanese americans during world war ii, but that statement is so relevant to really all chapters of our history. Certainly with respect to lgbt history we are and we will revisit it and reinterpret it through the years particularly as our sifl righcivil rights ar continuing to evolve. Human beings take time to evolve. When you look back at the era of the 50s we think we have progressed so much and we have in many ways. The fact were having this public discourse, this conversation, its being televised is tremendous progress. At the same time look what is happening elsewhere in the world. People who are being killed in uganda because theyre suspected of being gay. Weve got a long way to go. We have to pass enda. When jonathan was talking about dr. Camini, i couldnt help but think, okay, that was 1957 when he was terminated from his job with the federal government, but guess what . A lot of lgbt people can still be terminated from their jobs. We dont have a federal enda. So were not there yet, either. And for the other side of the enda viewpoint, check my article at cato. I wanted to use the moderators prerogative of throwing out a question because we promised in some of the announcement material to shed a light on the relationship between freedom of expression and historically marginalized groups, and not a day goes by when you dont see arguments in the press, both here and in countries like britain, that Free Expression is dangerous to marginalized groups because it allows hate to flourish and allows hateful forces to organize and prop began dies. Two examples from england within the last couple weeks. The conservative government has announced a proposal for socalled extremists disruption orders by which the government would be able to go it and forbid supposed extremists from using facebook, twitter, or other social media. They intend to use this apparently against alleged extremists from militant islamists to people who preach racial hate or hate against gays. Even more recently a debate was shut down at oxford about abortion, and one of the students who helped to shut it down wrote a boastful article in the independent one of the leading newspaper there is explaining why she was proud of doing so. The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has detrimental effect, has a detrimental effect on marginalized groups. If she was here, what would you tell her . Who first . Well, if we havent plugged it enough already, kindly inquisitors has a new afterward thats devoted specifically to this and i mention it because its a very live issue right now. The argument has gained traction, especially in europe, not so much in america, that if enough people start saying enough things that are hateful or just wrongheaded or just bigoted, that creates a hostile environment for minorities. They cannot participate fully as citizens. They become repressed and, therefore, they need protections of various sort and i reject that entirely as a gay man. There are a lot of reasons for that. Which you can read about in the book. Vi done enough of that yet . Author signing afterward. But a sentence for each of the two most important. The first is weve got a whole lot of history that shows that minority rights are not safely entrusted to majoritarian enforcers. It just doesnt work. Again and again we see this and again and again we see laws against obscenity and hate and religious defamation used against groups that inconvenience governments or authorities or college krens sors or whatever. I halt to think what would have happened to gay people had you had these kind of laws when they could have been used against us as surely they would have been. By the time you have a consensus to have a hate crimes law you generally dont need it. Second and more important and going back to the point that the gentleman in the back row made, how do we get out of this stuff . Well, the answer is we make moral progress. We evolve as a species in a morally positive direction towards freedom and Human Dignity and we do that through a system of debate and discourse. We dont start with the right answer and eliminate the wrong ones by brute force. We do that by pitting prejudices against each other, treating them as a social resource, including the bigoted, nasty, oppressive, and hateful ones, pitting them against each other and trusting as over time it almost always does, that the superior moral opinions will win. Thats what worked for gay people and the last thing i would like to see happen is to have people who claim to speak for me and do not have my best interests at heart. Very little to add. Whether or not youre using the government to enforce good ideas or bad ideas, i go back to the words of frank camini that jonathan quoted, that the government shouldnt have power over the mind, and that that is precisely why the First Amendment exists. Hate crime laws in europe have done nothing to quell the growth of right wing nationalist movements and yet in the United States where the Supreme Court has held that even the lunatic rantings of the Westboro Baptist church and their homophobic protests are protected under the First Amendment and that has done nothing to slow the growth of progress toward samesex marriage and toward General Social acceptability of homosexuals in the United States. In fact, hate speech helps us. This is something i wish i could put across to the well meaning people who try to help us with all these protections. First, these protections, they confirm the stereotype of weak homosexuals who need help and cant defend ourselves which is not true, but second shts letting the haters have their say make us look good by comparison. Thats how we got here. So please spare us attempts to protect us from haters. And i would just add that i think one of the best ways gay people can fight this kind of thing is to be out. Stand up and be out, and i realize that for some people its dangerous to do that. I realize for some people its damn scary to do that. And i say do it anyway. Be out because when a person who claims to hate gay people gets to know you, they may just change their minds about gay people. Can i ask a question of lisa . Youre doing a lot of document requests from i guess a lot of president ial libraries and archives. Yes. What kind of attitudes are you finding 60 years later when you go after this stuff . Are you hitting like stone wall and reluctance or are you hitting cooperation and acceptance or what . All of the above i would say, right, charles. I would say all of the above. I dont think that the stonewalling, if you will, is necessarily about antilgbt sentiment. I think its bureaucracy. I think its red tape. I think its trying to navigate through a Large Organization or organizations to find the documents. I dont know that, for example, someone who sends a foia request is having any better a time at it than we are. I do think youre onto something. Some project you wanted to do that was your own idea and youd always rather give priority to carrying out your own ideas. Yes. In the third row. Nick little with the center for inquiry. I think its interesting when you talk about the government controlling ideas because if we look at lawrence, it was actions, it was about samesex intercourse. If you look at marriage, its actions. Its about the action of two men or two women getting married. Was there ever an attempt by the federal government to define homosexuality in a way to take it outside of just the controlling of ideas because it cements like otherwise its a purely mental concept. Once you take the actions out of it. We deny in my world we deny the distinction is meaningful. The point of sodomy laws in practice, you know, its targeting a behavior. Im sorry in principle its targeting a behavior. In practice as we all knew it targeted anyone who was gay who was seen as advocating what was then seen as a crime, soliciting what was seen as a crime. You got fired from your job and you cant be what you are and think your thoughts and go about your life in a meaningful way if you are under threat of political persecution for acting on that. So its like saying, okay, well, look, you can be okay believing in the tenets of judaism. You cant go to synagogue and you cant practice. Thats where we draw the line. No jew would say that that was a meaningful disdistinction. I would in that sense push back against the premise and say its all or nothing. Front row, greg. Thank you. Gregory t. Anglo with log cabin republicans. I wonder, john than, youre correct well, i agree with you i will say that we havent experienced that much blowback in the wake of the Marriage Equality rulings but what we have seen if anything is all these years after this one versus olesen case, people who are christians who are claiming similar freedom of speech protections when it comes to photography, baking the wedding cake. So i wonder, and this question is actually open to anyone on the panel, if theres if you see the Supreme Court having to consider a similar case about freedom of speech and how that impacts an individuals perhaps right to discriminate in those cases and if that could inform the Supreme Courts Marriage Equality ruling if they do take unthe case in the next session. This is something that has been of continuing interest to the Cato Institute which has filed amicus briefs not always successfully on behalf of wedding photographers, for example, who had objections religious objections to serving samesex weddings. Psychologically you can imagine that Supreme Court justices might be worried about both issues at once. That doesnt mean that a case will present both issues for resolution at once, but the feelings run very high out there among commentators on the idea that once you have a discrimination law on the books, that its supposed to be as sweeping and have as few exceptions as possible. Its not clear to me that the Supreme Court is ready to stand against what seems to be the spirit of the age on the more antidiscrimination laws the belter. I wish it would because i believe these laws would be better if they had greater play for individual autonomy and choice, but thats not been a big theme of the courts rulings in recent years. I would just add that your question focuses on that sort of growing tension between antidiscrimination and freedom of expression. I think you can ask the question, could an editorial writer be forced to write an editorial praising homosexuality . Of course not, that would be an obvious First Amendment violation. I think you can say the same thing of a photographer who is compelled by law to practice art in favor of a lifestyle that person does not want to associate with. It can extend to a baker. Again, there is a tension there, but i dont think you resolve that tension by having the government come in and be the referee and decide who is going to be compelled to express themselves in a way that the government now decides is the acceptable the one acceptable way. Currently you do have the government in new mexico and elsewhere coming in to make just such decisions. Which gets backto that eternal vigilance i was talking about. More questions . There was one okay. Yes, sir. Bob spiegel, member of the board of the stone wall Veterans Association and former member of the board of the American Civil Liberties union. I waited to the end so i could go through a few points to ask my questions. Brief questions only, please. No speeches. Then my question is there are many people who believe that hate crimes statutes implicate the First Amendment, and it would appear that many in the Gay Community support what would be called a hurt feelings exception to virtually every provision of the First Amendment. So id like to hear the panel speak about those two issues. Hate crimes and hate speech, two different issues. Anyone want to start . Well, first of all, we have to start with definitions. Hate speech, what is that . Basically it can be whatever someone finds offensive, and thats why there can be a significant tension between wanting to have a Civil Society and forcing people to limit their speech. Greg is sitting here in the front row. Ease the president of fire, the foundation of individual rights and education. One of the continuing battles of that organization and im proud to asirs with it is to address campus speech codes where you have basically the enforcement of civility on college campuses, meaning it is what greg calls an offendedness sweepstakes. People who are offended by, well, you name it, anything, can then appeal to the sanctions of these very broad and indefinable codes to put a clamp on whatever speech they dont like, and you see that in the wave of Commencement Speakers who are being disinvited during what f. I. R. I. Calls disinvitation season if they are going to speak on something that is considered to be politically inconvenient or that evoke a minority on a campus or even evoke a majority, it doesnt matter, considers to be wrong headed. I think that there needs to be a greater recognition as jonathan was saying for protecting the speech that we hate because then you have a true debate and people in a free society can decide for themselves what they want to believe. So i take the question to be about hate crimes laws as opposed to hate speech laws. Many people believe that hate crimes laws i think they do. Hate crimes laws for those who are not on top of this are a bit different because they essentially they are additional penalties for people who commit crimes against minorities and are motivated by hate. I think they implicate the First Amendment. I dont think theyre as clear cut and i dont get nearly as worried about them as i do hate speech law which punishing speech per se because in hate crimes laws youre punishing things that are already punishable anyway and youre debating the length of the punishment. I think its rotten crime policy though i do worry a bit about First Amendment. I think the premise of your point was a lot of gay people favor these protections, is that it . Yes. And that is certainly true, but here is the thing. My experience has been that gay americans are no less supportive of the First Amendment than other americans and that the broader issue is my very first managing editor at my very first newspaper job said if you put the First Amendment up to a plebiscite of the American Public today, it would lose. So thats the ongoing educational struggle that i do with my gay friends and i do with my straight friends just as well, which is every generation has to be taught afresh that the very counterintuitive proposition that we should specifically make room in society for the most vial things that people think and say,