(This originally ran in Right Wisconsin Friday.)

A Facebook Friend posted this on his wall one week ago:

I’m seeing people on both sides of the gay marriage debate taking potshots at those of us who have principled reasons not to get drawn into their statist political dispute. Please understand that we don’t owe you the support you resent not getting. It’s perfectly reasonable for you to make decisions about what you’re going to support politically, but please don’t be arrogant enough to tell us that we ought to support your position. You have your reasons for taking your position in the conflict. We have our reasons for staying out of it. Please respect our right to come to a different conclusion than you’ve come to.

This was written in response to last week’s inundation on Facebook of the support-of-same-sex-marriage symbol, a pink equals sign upon a red square, which same-sex-marriage supporters were using as their profile photo. The alternative logo was a white equals sign over a rainbow.

The observation that begins this piece could have been written well before Tuesday, however. Bumper stickers announcing the car owner’s political beliefs, or buttons announcing the wearer’s beliefs, far predate Facebook profile photos or memes, or Twitter hashtags. And buttons with punchy sayings or symbols predate bumper stickers because they predate cars.

Facebook and other social media give people the ability to put into symbolism the title of NBC and ABC commentator David Brinkley’s autobiography, Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion. Of course, a photo or a pithy bumper-sticker slogan is not a logical argument; it’s a nonnegotiable demand. It is not possible to create a logical, factual argument (for instance, the “right” to marriage, for heterosexuals or homosexuals) within a one-quarter-square-inch space on a computer screen or part of the rear bumper or a window of a car.

I come from the People’s Republic of Madison, where people are so open-minded their brains fall out of their skulls. I became inundated with other people’s politics as soon as I became a UW student. In Madison, free speech rights include the right to run out onto the Camp Randall Stadium field during the playing of the National Anthem (specifically, at “and the rockets’ red glare”) before a nationally televised football game to stage an anti-nuclear “die-in” before a presidential election.

Go to any college town or any other liberal enclave and you will see Obama–Biden bumper stickers, the message of which is “We Won, You Lost, You Suck, Die.” Some printer in Madison is making a small fortune printing bumper stickers seeking to “Recall Walker,” “Indict Walker,” “Imprison Walker,” etc. (I suppose “Deport Walker” and “Assassinate Walker” are somewhere in the proofing process.)

As someone whose professional skills include award-winning headline writing, and as someone who blogs, I can appreciate catchy slogans. As someone who believes arguments based on fact and logic are superior to emotionalism, I find Facebook photo politics unconvincing, yet annoying.

This is the fault of liberals more than conservatives. Radical feminist (as self-described) Carol Hanisch is credited for popularizing the phrase “The personal is political.” (That’s a game conservatives can play too, as demonstrated by the efforts by some to de-Google themselves as a protest against Google’s commemorating Easter with Cesar Chavez’s face.) I assume bumper stickers on cars of conservative or libertarian drivers followed as a collective response to the lefty bumper stickers.

In both leftward and rightward cases, this is the logical result of too large government, to which both Democrats and Republicans contribute in different areas. And given the (lack of) respect for property we’ve seen during Recallarama, a bumper sticker is an invitation to vehicle vandalism. (That said, the National Rifle Association-member sticker might have some repellent use.)

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was quoted (though the phrase predates Holmes) that “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” Having someone’s political beliefs jammed into your face — sitting in traffic behind a Toyota Prius festooned with various lefty bumper stickers, or various Facebook sloganeering — violates our right to free expression, as in our right to not express ourselves on every political movement or issue. It’s also an excellent example of our self-centered-to-the-point-of-selfishness society that some people believe their opinion trumps everyone else’s, including the rights of those who choose not to have an opinion, or choose not to pay attention to someone else’s opinion.

This may seem to be a strange position for someone who writes opinions every day to take. But my blog, steveprestegard.com, is there for people to read or not, and to agree with or not, as their choice. The same applies to Right Wisconsin. The only way to avoid the obnoxious Facebook face is to de-Friend them. (Which I considered doing before the equals signs started going away.) The only way to avoid the obnoxious bumper sticker is to obliterate the offending vehicle with your much-larger-than-theirs pickup truck.

The in-your-face Facebook profile photo actually prevents political discussion. In response to the pink-on-red equals sign, some people posted a cross, indicating to them that marriage is intended by God to be between a man and a woman. Others created an equal sign indicating a different sort of equality — revenues (should) = spending. Still others replaced the equal sign with two parallel guns, or two parallel strips of bacon.

There are interesting arguments for same-sex marriage on the part of conservatives. I’ve read arguments against same-sex marriage written by homosexual people. In neither case will you make an argument by sloganeering, or symbolizing. The writer at the beginning of this piece chose to not participate in the pro-vs.-anti argument because he has a right to be left alone, and he probably didn’t feel like being accused of being homophobic (an accusation hurled against basically everyone who dared express an opinion in favor of traditional marriage), or anti-Christian.

The First Amendment seems to me to include the right to not be drowned in others’ political opinions when you are not interested in seeing or hearing them.