This is one of those posts that almost didn’t happen. I debated over and over again over what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it, why I wanted to say it and whether I should say anything. Ultimately, I decided there is an important point — a cautionary tale, actually — that I think bloggers and their readers can’t be reminded of enough.

A while back, I read a newspaper story about the funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq which was interrupted by a group of ultra-conservative Christians who were protesting this country’s growing acceptance of homosexuals. Though they gave no indication that they thought the deceased soldier was a homosexual, they chose to protest at the funeral of this soldier, and many others, in order to send a message that because we are turning away from God’s supposed hatred of homosexuals by being more tolerant of them, God is, in turn, punishing us by allowing our soldiers to be killed in a war.

For the purposes of the point I want to make with this vignette, I will resist the temptation to shoot down the protestors’ rationale…and there are plenty of holes to be exposed.

No matter how you feel about the war, our soldiers, religion, tolerance or homosexuality, set all of that aside for a moment and consider this one concept: free speech.

The protesters had a right to protest and speak their minds. Though they could have, out of common decency, found a different way and a more appropriate place and time to make their voices heard, they still had a right to be there. The family members and friends of the decedent did not have the right — and I don’t recall reading that any even attempted — to go up to the protesters and punch their collective lights out.

But it wouldn’t take a visionary to imagine that as being a possible outcome of a protest about homosexuality taking place at the funeral of a soldier who was in no way connected to the practice thereof.

Here’s another example, this one completely fictional: a group of angry citizens who are fed up over taxes might decide to burn the American flag. Unfortunately, burning the flag is legal. If they were do so in proximity to veterans who possessed a strong sense of patriotism, the veterans might stage their own protest, or they might egg the cars of the flag burners. They would have the right to do the former, but not the latter.

Still, these are outcomes of the exercise of free speech that are easy to imagine.

But who do you blame in such scenarios? Well, the easy answer is that you blame the person who committed the illegal act. There’s no question about that.

The question that does remain, however, is whether or not the blame might be shared in any degree at all by the person who chose the specific way to speak his or her mind that led others to the outrageous behavior. The Christians who wanted to protest the growing tolerance of homosexuals in this country could just have easily have chosen to do so on their church’s grounds, rather than at the funeral of a soldier who had nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality but rather served as an unwitting pawn in their agenda. Had they been attacked, their attackers would have been guilty, regardless. But they might have avoided such a reaction, if one had occurred, by making an attempt to be sensitive to the feelings of those they would encounter at that specific venue and staging their protest elsewhere.

What they actually did encounter, according to the article, is an opposing group that sends their own message to counter them. While both groups have the right to be there, one might expect that a sense of decency would have them make their statements elsewhere for the sake of the deceased’s loved ones who have far more personal feelings to deal with than homosexuality at that moment.

In my other fictional example, the flag burning tax protestors might have avoided damage to their cars had their protest included placards denouncing taxes rather than the burning of the American flag. Those who damaged the cars of the protestors would be guilty of a crime; those whose protest enraged them to the point of breaking the law might also have had an indirect hand in bringing about this outcome not by their message but by the specific way in which it was delivered.

It’s important to note that in each case, the people who spoke their minds might still have been the target of those who would break the law to silence them. But some actions will rile this kind of person more effectively and more quickly than others.

It goes back to what I’ve said before about the consequences of speaking one’s mind. There’s that basic law of physics that tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The internet, unfortunately, seems to be immune to this basic law of existence. Sometimes, the reactions are equal and opposite; other times, they are completely outrageous in comparison to the action that prompted them. The longer you have a presence on the web, the more clear this should become.

A blogger with whom I have disagreed on a variety of topics has recently taken down his blog. Elsewhere, it has been suggested that this decision came after some online stalkers sent harrassing emails to him and somehow threatened his family. Because he made a few vitriolic posts about me in the past, you might expect that I’m glad to find out that his journal has been taken down.

If you do have that expectation, you obviously do not know me as well as you think you do, because I’m not happy about it. Those who disagree with him are perfectly within their rights to debate him, on their respective blogs or on his. Anyone who crosses the line of harrassment or threatens his family’s security is committing an act that is as inexcusable as it is illegal.

I assume that the blogger in question no longer reads this blog, and I’m fine with that. After all, I was the one who suggested that if he found what I had to say as repugnant as his rants seemed to suggest, he was best served by no longer reading it; I wasn’t going to change my opinions just to make him happy, nor would he adjust his beliefs just to please me.

In any case, it would be an unnecessary gesture on my part to attempt to send him a message anyway, because though I feel bad for him and his family that he is dealing with people who have taken an apparent disagreement, real or invented, to an unreasonable extreme — and I do feel bad for them — he has made it more than clear in the past that he doesn’t give a damn what I think, even taking the step after our very first debate more than a year ago to block my ability to send him an email. So this isn’t for him.

The purpose of this post isn’t to gloat. Nor is it to imply for a moment that I think I’ve always managed to write something without offending anyone or being unfair. My point here is merely to remind my readers that sometimes, keeping your opinions to yourself isn’t a bad idea. A long time ago, I quoted the late John Charles Daly, news commentator and moderator of the original “What’s My Line?” who once said:

“The art of conversation lies not only in saying the right thing at the right time, but in leaving unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

Daly was absolutely right about that. But beyond saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, there’s a danger in saying something the wrong way at the tempting moment. You can debate all day with someone who is willing to discuss something. But when you have people who, for whatever reason, won’t debate and won’t consider other people’s feelings, perspectives or life experiences as anything other than wrong, they’re not out to discuss anything: they’re demagoguing. And sometimes, unfortunately, that behavior draws the crazies out of the woodwork.

My boss has a great saying that I have posted in my office:

“You can’t argue with crazy.”

And it’s true. You can’t. You only can do your best to defend against it. Does it mean that we should all shut down our blogs or stop talking about our own personal opinions? No, but it does mean that at least every once and a while, we should be willing to consider that we’re not automatically right, no matter how right we think we are, and that other people, even those who disagree with us the most, might still be decent people who just think differently, and are therefore deserving of respect and compassion, not just scorn and disdain.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that you would treat everyone with respect and still attract the unwelcome attention of a crazy person. But there are no guarantees in anything. If you’re careful with matches, there’s at least a lot less of a chance that you’ll get burned than if you constantly play with fire. And as others — including the person whose blog has gone missing — have pointed out in the past, being disrespectful to others hurts you as much as it hurts your target.

As readers of blogs, we should also keep in mind when we read of someone we like having a disagreement with someone else, that both parties have their own side of the issue. If you side with a blogger because you admire or respect them, you’re also making a leap of faith that the blogger you’re supporting isn’t leaving out any important details that might sink their own case. Sometimes, when this happens, it’s very obvious. But not always.

In such cases, whether you suspect there’s some details missing, it’s not unreasonable to show your support or to disagree with your friend on the points that have been raised. But it’s always unreasonable to go after the other person without bothering to hear their side first. It’s also always unreasonable to threaten someone’s safety. Always.

Maybe some people take those reality shows in which the unpopular can be quickly “voted off” a little too seriously. But the truth is, there should be room for everybody in the blogosphere, whether you happen to agree with them or not.