Originally appeared Sept. 13, 2000, in the Chicago Free Press.
Under pressure from conservative Christians, Idaho legislators voted to block state-owned Idaho Public Television from airing documentary programs friendly toward gay interests. The episode demonstrates the dangers of letting government insert itself into the business of subsidizing the dissemination of speech and opinion, something that cannot be done in a principled way without offending either majority or minority opinion or both.
LAST YEAR Idaho Public Television announced that it would broadcast "It's Elementary," a documentary film about the efforts by a few schools to teach tolerance of gays and lesbians to school children.
That's when the controversy started.
Conservative Christian groups sought to block the program. According to the Chicago Tribune account, Christian Coalition spokesman David Ferdinand said the film was "propaganda for the homosexual point of view."
"It spoke directly to the advantages of the gay lifestyle," Ferdinand claimed, "but not to the disadvantages."
It did not, of course, but Idaho Public Television decided it would be prudent to have a companion program to discuss the issues raised in "It's Elementary."
But then Nancy Bloomer, the former head of the Idaho Christian Coalition, refused to participate, saying, "Once a bell has been rung, you can't unring it."
Bloomer's claim is strange. If she meant that once a presentation has been made it is impossible to offer counter-arguments against it, she is clearly wrong. People offer counter-arguments to views presented earlier all the time.
Bloomer may have feared that once the idea of tolerance for gays is discussed it might catch on and tolerance might break out.
Or she may have meant that any program acknowledging that homosexuals even exist should not be broadcast, fearing that talk about homosexuality will plant homosexual desire in the minds of people who never felt it before.
Whatever Bloomer meant, clearly mere balance of competing viewpoints was not her goal. Her goal was to block any discussion about gays at all.
Eventually, under pressure from conservative Christian groups, the legislature passed rules banning public (government) television broadcasts that could encourage people to violate state law.
As it happens, in Idaho, sodomy, fellatio, or any other "unnatural copulation" constitute a felony carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Although critics argued that the rules constituted "prior restraint" on free speech, Idaho's attorney general said the restrictions were legal since the state owned the broadcast license so it was just regulating itself.
Of course, encouraging children - or anyone - to be tolerant, even accepting, of homosexuals is not encouraging anyone to break the law. Perhaps if tolerance were widely accepted it might lead to efforts to decriminalize sodomy. But political advocacy to change the law is not against the law either.
Nevertheless, the state legislature, which allocates state income from taxes, indicated its displeasure by reducing funding to the station. And some legislators now advocate completely privatizing the station, eliminating all taxpayer support.
As state senator Mel Richard said, "The state doesn't belong in the public TV business."
Frankly, getting the government out of the broadcasting business seems like an excellent idea.
The fundamental problem with government (taxpayer) funding of any activity is that every group wants to control it for its own purposes. This is a particularly contentious issue if the government disseminates news and opinion.
The problem? What news? Which opinions?
One solution is to broadcast no controversial positions, only things that have widespread consensus support and offend no one's sensibilities. This would be pretty much limited to old movies, cooking shows and Lawrence Welk reruns.
But we do not need the government to confirm our settled views and provide bland entertainment. It would be better to let taxpayers keep their money and spend it on whatever news sources and entertainment they individually want.
A second solution is for the majority, that is, whoever is in control of the government at the moment, to broadcast the views it wants to promote. Here the majority is simply using tax money to reinforce its majority status. This is very democratic: The majority rules.
As the Christian Coalition's David Ferdinand said about "It's Elementary," "Don't use our tax dollars to support this."
But groups whose views are not represented will then claim they are not getting their tax dollar's worth, that they are suffering taxation without representation. They would be right. And they are often us.
A third solution is for the government to provide a variety of viewpoints found in the population. But then the questions arise again: How much diversity? Which viewpoints? Where do you draw lines?
There is no principled way to answer this.
There are an almost infinite number of ideas and opinions out there in the world, so there will always be viewpoints that are slighted or excluded because they are obscure or "marginal," or "fringe," or "special interest," or "unpopular," or "offensive," or "harmful" or plain wrong.
Most of us can probably think of dozens of ideas and beliefs, some of them ones we hold, that have never been addressed on tax-funded radio or television.
So the only "diverse" viewpoints to be allowed will be a fairly narrow range of "legitimate" or "well-established" or "popular" viewpoints that have a well-mobilized constituency supporting them, which is not really much diversity at all.
So leave the government out of the broadcasting and propaganda businesses. Gays, like other minorities, have a far better chance at visibility and a fair hearing in the free and competitive market of commercial broadcast and cable networks.