Vol. 26: If Hitler wanted to hire me

Gay marriage meets free speech

         Back in the ‘80s, a distant cousin of my wife invited me to lunch. After brief pleasantries, Harry (as I will call him) got right to the point. He had been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer and had at most a few months to live. During his remaining time, he hoped to write his memoirs. Could he hire me to assist him?

         My initial response was positive. Everyone should write their memoirs, I told him. It’s a gift we give to posterity in ways we can’t imagine. “I’ll be happy to help you,” I said.      

         But as Harry discussed his project, a darker motive emerged. His primary purpose in writing his memoirs, Harry explained, was to tell the world how badly he’d been treated by his wife and sons.    

         At this, my enthusiasm evaporated. “You don’t want to do that,” I told Harry. “It will reflect badly on you. You will spend a lot of money to tarnish your own reputation, for eternity.”

         In dispensing this advice, I did what any good professional would do, i.e., provide a client with my best independent judgment, even if it’s to my own financial detriment. But when Harry insisted on proceeding with his vindictive memoir, I found myself thinking: I’ve given him my best advice. I’ve told him this project is ill-advised. Beyond that, who am I to deny him the right to proceed, just because I possess certain writing and editing skills that he lacks?   

         I resolved this dilemma— perhaps unwisely?— by setting a high price for my services. Harry said he would think about it. Four weeks later he was dead, and I was off the hook.

An inspiring story, except…..

         I thought about Harry recently when I read “Words Fail,” Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker profile of the writer Alice Sebold (May 29). As a freshman at Syracuse University in 1981, Sebold was raped on the last day of her classes. Because she was a skilled and sensitive writer even then, Sebold determined to use “words, language, writing” to overcome her trauma. Her English professors at Syracuse— some of them famous writers like Tess Gallagher and Tobias Wolff— encouraged Sebold to transcend her pain through a life devoted to writing.

          In 1999 she published Lucky, a best-selling memoir about the rape and the subsequent conviction of a young Black man named Anthony Broadwater. Then she enrolled in the master’s writing program at the University of California at Irvine. There she began writing The Lovely Bones, a novel about a girl who is raped and murdered, which has been described as the most commercially successful debut novel since Gone With the Wind. Sebold also published an article in the New York Times (titled “Speaking of the Unspeakable”) and appeared on an episode of “Oprah” devoted to rape. Her case was cited in Trauma and Recovery, a groundbreaking book by the psychiatrist Judith Herman.

         Here, you might think, was the ultimate example of the redemptive power of courage and language to triumph over a devastating ordeal. But there was one flaw in Sebold’s inspiring story: Anthony Broadwater, who spent more than 16 years in prison for her rape, turned out to have been an innocent victim of Sebold’s faulty identification and the prosecution’s erroneous forensic methodology. Broadwater was every bit as much a casualty of that 1981 rape as Sebold was. The critical difference between them, it seems, was the level of their communications skills.

         When Aviv caught up with Broadwater recently, he told her, “Believe it or not, I want to write a book. I want to tell my story.”

A mockery of the law?

         Which brings me to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in in favor of Lorrie Smith, an evangelical Christian graphic designer from Colorado who creates wedding websites but refuses to produce websites celebrating gay marriages. Is her refusal a violation of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law? Or is it a legitimate assertion of Smith’s First Amendment right— in this case, her right to refrain from promoting a cause she opposes?

         The Court’s decision has been assailed as “a blow to LGBT rights” (as Reuters put it), but it strikes me as legally and morally sound.  

         As a writer and editor, my services are available to anyone, even people with whom I disagree (like, say, my wife’s cousin Harry). More than 20 years ago I was interviewed by Abraham Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who was looking for a ghostwriter for a book he wanted to write about anti-Semitism. Foxman and I have both devoted our careers to presumably noble causes, but on the issue of free speech we’re polar opposites: Foxman believes hateful speech should be suppressed; I believe it should be publicly exposed and dissected. Nevertheless, I was happy to propose myself as Foxman’s collaborator: My ability to shoot holes in his arguments before publication, I contended, would produce an unassailable manuscript. (Foxman ultimately chose another collaborator for the book, which came out in 2003 as Never Again! The Threat of the New Antisemitism.)

         Just as lawyers are theoretically bound to offer zealous representation even to people they despise, so I would offer my writing services to a convicted rapist like Anthony Broadwater, if only to enable him to tell his story as articulately as Alice Sebold told hers for decades. After all, in the process the world might discover that Broadwater wasn’t a rapist after all.

         Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing the dissent in the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling, said the decision allowing Lorrie Smith to sell her product only to opposite-sex couples "makes a mockery of the law." But to my mind, this issue is less a matter of law than of common sense.

         Should a Republican graphic designer be required to design websites for Democrats, or vice versa? Should a Black graphic designer be forced to design websites for white nationalists?

           Or suppose Adolf Hitler asked me to ghostwrite Mein Kampf. I would politely exercise my right to decline. Or I’d quote him an exorbitant fee, as I did with my wife’s cousin Harry. Or I might refer Hitler to other ghostwriters I know. Mein Kampf, after all, was a valuable work: It provided anyone who cared to read it in 1925 with a road map of Hitler’s intentions ten or 15 years later.

         I would certainly inquire why on Earth Hitler would want to hire a Jew to ghost an anti-Semitic manifesto, when surely some certified bigot could do the job more enthusiastically. By the same token, if I were Lorrie Smith I would ask prospective gay clients why, if they want to celebrate their marriage, they would give the job to someone who wants to see them burn in eternal hellfire?

Gay marriage, pro and con

         The pros and cons of gay marriage are beside the point of this column, but let me take a crack at it anyway.

         The case against gay marriage: The most basic human purpose is reproduction of the species. Although today we take population growth for granted, the universe functioned just fine without us for hundreds of millions of years and might do so again if we drop the ball. Reproduction is necessarily performed by straight couples, ideally operating within lifelong commitments. Because men are different from women (psychologically as well as biologically), straight couples who engage in this vital but arduous project need all the support and appreciation they can get. The institution of marriage is designed to address that need among heterosexuals. It should not be watered down by bestowing it upon others.

         The case for gay marriage: Humanity has a vested interest in encouraging lifelong monogamous sexual relationships— gay as well as straight— as a means of preserving social order and preventing disease. If gays or lesbians want to commit themselves to lifelong monogamy, they inflict no harm on anyone else. On the contrary, they do humanity a favor. Besides, many straight marriages produce no children. And many gays and lesbians make better parents (albeit adoptive parents) than straights. So what does humanity gain by excluding gays and lesbians from this institution?

         I’m happy to lend my skill set as a writer to either side of this debate. But I reserve the right to do so voluntarily.

         We all have stories to tell. But there’s a difference between helping people to tell their stories and forcing people to tell your stories.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com