An interesting conundrum in the Washington DC area has two different groups of LGBT citizens lining up on opposing sides of a free speech issue. Stand For Marriage DC, an anti-gay group trying to reverse the recent decision to approve same-sex marriages in the nation's capitol, has started advertising on the sides of city buses.
This has Full Equality Now! DC up in arms. The group posted a statement to their website last week demanding that the bus authority remove the ads. Subsequently, another group of LGBT leaders (including the heads of local organizations like the ACLU, the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance and the LGBT Democratic Gertrude Stein Club) wrote to 
John B. Catoe, General Manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, urging him to ignore Full Equality Now! DC's demand and continue to run the anti-gay advertisements. These folks cite the First Amendment's right to free speech.
This brings up a problem we've seen rear its head here on Bilerico Project before. The ads are offensive and denigrate LGBT people by advocating that our rights should be put to a popular vote. They suck and God knows how many LGBT people will have to see the ad drive past or ride one of the buses for transportation. But at what point do we measure "offensive?" At what point do we say that our right to censor someone outweighs their right to speak? I'd have to fall on the side of free speech. The proper response to speech you don't like is to give your own better speech.
Oddly enough, Full Equality Now! DC's website now says the letter was only a draft meant to spark conversation and wasn't actually sent to the bus authority. Sadly, while the bus advertisements weren't getting much of a look before, after the story became about the dueling LGBT groups fighting over the right to free speech, the ads have gotten a lot more exposure from news stories, blog posts and wire reports. Stand For Marriage bought some cheap bus ads; we gave them the publicity they needed to get them seen. Stupid.
The back-and-forth statements are after the jump.
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