Freedom of Speech has a volume dial

Originally I planned on writing about the various political and religious comments on Facebook and how they bug me. I then realized how hypocritical that would be of me as I just proudly shared Anna Paquin's announcement that she is a bisexual. What this comes down to is that we all have freedom of speech as well as the freedom to not listen or pay attention. If my socially liberal views that I espouse continually bother a "friend" on Facebook, they have every right to remove me from their friends' list or hide all posts from me. This is true of me with regards to religion exclamations from enthusiastic Christians. I don't have the same views as them so that leaves me a few choices. I can continue to have them on my friends' list and ignore their writings, make comments on their status as to why I don't see things as they do, or remove them from my lists.



The first choice which is to ignore their writings on religion works for me if I am close to the person and the majority of their writings discuss other topics. However, if the majority of the discussion is of a religious or political nature then I move on to the next option. I respect everyone's right to their own religious belief and since I can't claim to have the answer of which if any religion has it right; I will not comment on a religious comment. This has led me to remove some "friends" who share mostly on their religion because it is not of interest to me and I have limited hours in my day. Lastly, I mentioned removing people from my list. This I have done mostly in cases where a person was constantly making what I perceive to be cynical comments on the state of the world. Every individual has the right to be a cynic, but I have the right to not want to hear more than the ones I already hear.

A discussion on the positive and negatives of a certain candidate or politician is interesting for me to read about. I get to see other points of view and learn a lot. However, reading someone call our president names like Obamanation or Obamarama or whatever does me no good and in my opinion is disrespectful. I didn't agree with much of President George W. Bush's policies, but see no reason to lower myself to the level of mocking his name. Doing so would truly be bush league.