Apparently, on Wenz’s account, what is sexual harassment for some people is free speech to others, right? Is there some principled way to distinguish protected expression from speech and expression that can be socially patrolled and sanctioned?

Reading Questions and Discussion Questions

Peter S. Wenz: “Introduction” to Beyond Red and Blue

The Supreme Court reversed the lower appeals court in the Darlene Miller case. But the decision was a 5-4 split? Why the split? What seems to have been at issue for the Court?

Wenz reports that the Kerrigan and Mock lawsuit contends that “Connecticut’s constitution implies a right to same-sex marriage”. How is that possible? Certainly no one would claim that the constitution implies a right to brother/sister marriage, (would they?) .

Apparently, what is sexual harassment for some people is free speech to others, right? How would those be distinguished?

Wenz briefly describes a case in which two graduate students complained that another student’s desktop picture of his bikini-clad wife created a ‘hostile work environment”. What would lead the department head to agree with that complaint, as Wenz reports? Put another way, how would someone have to be thinking about pictures of wives and hostile work environments and co-workers and whatnot in order to make the complaint credible?

What are the list of cases with which Wenz opens the chapter – however briefly described by him – supposed to be examples of?

How does Wenz explain the prominent polar opposition so prominent in contemporary American politics and social life? Why does he find the idea of polar opposition misleading?

Inevitably a list of political philosophies in which each ‘philosophy’ makes an appearance as one sentence is bound to be inviting conceptual trouble. Wenz’s solution to that problem seems to take the form of describing each of the twelve “philosophies” as expressing what he calls ‘values”. Fair enough. What would a ‘value” be if the apparently incommensurable members of his list are all thought to be expressing values?