In the early 1950s, my great-uncle,
Alphaeus Hunton, went to prison. It was the height of the McCarthy era, and he was serving as trustee of a bail fund established by the Civil Rights Congress, declared by the Subversive Activities Control Board to be a Communist-front organization. The fund posted bail for a group of men convicted of advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Several fled, and my great-uncle -- along with his fellow trustee, the eminent writer Dashiell Hammett -- refused to answer questions before a federal judge about the source of the bail money.
They were held in criminal contempt and put behind bars. The federal courts refused to hear their appeal, and the Supreme Court denied a stay. Hunton was subsequently listed as a subversive by the U.S. attorney general. He held a master’s degree from Harvard, but in the fraught atmosphere of the McCarthy era was unable to find suitable employment. He ultimately left the country, and died abroad.
My late father told this story often, and its echoes have resonated throughout my life. I have spent my career fighting for genuine dialogue across our disagreements rather than the sloganeering, can't and demonization that have come to characterize our politics. My own choice of
the academic life was spurred in no small part by my search for an arena in which what matters is not which side you are on but the quality of your ideas.
So you will perhaps excuse me if I have no sympathy for
the efforts of gay-rights activists to smear and intimidate Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia, perhaps our most prominent scholar of law and religion, for the sin of speaking his mind.
A law student and a recent graduate, spurred on by the advocacy group GetEqual, have filed freedom-of-information requests for his telephone and travel records, in what they describe as an effort at dialogue about what they consider the harmful effects of his views.
This description is implausible. If they wanted to talk to him, they could knock on his door. The effort is aimed at intimidation. They want him to shut up.
