Freedom of Association is alive and well in Brooklyn
There’s yet another superhero film coming out soon, but instead of the endless Spider-Man or Batman retreads, Wonder Woman is being brought to the big screen.
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has managed to call attention to its showing of the film by hosting several women-only screenings that will raise money for Planned Parenthood. Of course this has produced a needless shitstorm of controversy as any explicit expression of identity politics is wont to in these contentious times.
Raising hackles against the screenings is a lot of pointless blather. This is at best a cheap publicity stunt (that has so far worked brilliantly). If it really bothers you, you should be extra sure not to give the organizers the attention they crave.
And it obscures a larger issue that this gives us cause to address: Freedom of association is a universal human right.
It’s a right of all free people to live as they choose among whom they choose. It’s a building block of any community. Because just as a community of free people defines who they are, they also define who they aren’t. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is not taxpayer-funded or given exclusive license of any kind by the government. It’s a private business. If it wants to ban men for a few screenings or a week or a year or forever, it can. There’s a distinct difference, not commonly understood, between the obligations of a publicly-funded entity and the rights of individuals.
Private businesses have a right to be as discriminatory as they like. You don’t have to let Mexicans into your house or fat people into your store. We agree that this kind of blanketed bigotry is morally wrong. There’s a quintessentially American value to want judge all people by their individual merits and not by some tribal calculus. But we all have the freedom to live however we want, and if that means being prejudiced, then that’s an individual’s right over their own private property and life.
Let’s use this as a “teachable moment” as they say, and point out that the same right women have to hold a women’s only event applies to both genders and any other personal classification you care to make. No one coming to the defense of the Alamo Drafthouse would have a leg to stand on should some of their critics hold a “men only” event. I don’t want to attend a sausage party movie screening just to make some kind of\ point, but if that’s your scene, have at it. In a free country, you have the right to be a bigot if you want to be, whether that’s based on gender, race or anything else.
Freedom of association is a universal right. That means if you believe in human rights, you have to defend the exercise of that right, even if you condemn the sentiment behind it. If you try to stop people from exercising their rights, no matter how virtuous your intentions seem, you are the villain.
I don’t think the powers that be at the Alamo Drafthouse hate men; in fact the owners are men. I think they are savvy businesspeople who managed to wring a ton of free publicity for their screenings of yet another superhero film. The public will likely forgive this strategically-timed chauvinistic bent; and they’ve won the hearts of a lot of women who may occasionally go out of their way to bring them business.
We will make some real progress if these screenings can make our more progressive friends “woke” to the fact that freedom of association is a great freedom to have and has to be protected.
Like it or not: Gun ownership is a civil right
A sickening act of terror outrages a nation and people demand strong action to prevent something like it from happen again. Not wanting to appear weak on fighting terrorism, the government proposes sweeping changes that infringe on our civil liberties. The new laws don’t really do much to prevent future attacks, but the government makes full use of the new laws and regulations, bringing charges against people for things that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends, and most of us agree we don’t like it.
The massacre of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina last week in a racially motivated attack. No one disagrees that the shooter should not have been able to get his hands on a gun. This crime has prompted new calls for stricter gun control laws. This would be a mistake.
There is an almost-universal failure on the part of many of our country’s best educated minds to view the right of firearms ownership as a liberty somehow not on par with our other Constitutional guarantees.
Everyone is outraged when people in power tread on our right to free speech or our right to not be subjected to warrantless searches or cruel and unusual punishment. Yet somehow the right to bear arms is considered antiquated and irrelevant. Defending that right is somehow seditious or extreme.
Firearms ownership is a right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, in the Second Amendment, coming right after the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech, of the press and religion. The amendment guaranteeing this right to the American people was placed second among a list of 10. That makes it important.
The argument against the Second Amendment today is that because the United States has a professional military and well-armed law enforcement agencies, that there is no need for ordinary people to have guns. Nothing could be a lazier reading of our Constitution or a more contemptuous view of one’s fellow citizens. Please keep in mind that there are about 80 million legal gun owners in the United States. If a fraction of them were homicidal maniacs, our streets would endlessly run with blood. And while the levels of gun homicides and suicides in the U.S. dwarf the rest of the civilized world, that’s no reason to infringe on the civil rights of our citizens.
Furthermore, exercising one’s rights has nothing to do with perceived need. Most eligible American’s don’t feel the need to vote, but no one would suggest we be stripped of that right or have those rights restricted.
While there is universal agreement that guns should not fall into the hands of criminals or the mentally ill, the laws that are already in place to prevent these dangerous people from obtaining firearms are often laxly enforced or have loopholes. In the recent Charleston shooting, the attacker was legally prohibited from obtaining a gun but took advantage of a loophole and took possession of one as a gift.
There are two central failures to the national issue of guns in the U.S. One is the failure of pro-gun advocates to realize that there is indeed a problem of too many of the wrong people obtaining guns.
But the more alarming problem is the refusal of gun-control advocates to acknowledge that firearms ownership is a fundamental civil right.
Matthew Sheahan 
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