It what may be the silliest expression of triumph at the Supreme Court ruling yesterday legalizing gay marriage across the United States, Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University, ponders “Can gay marriage defeat the Islamic State?”
Seriously.
While granting the thought is “admittedly sappy,” Brooks believes the power of social media can send ISIS a stern message.
The professor writes in Foreign Policy:
Do you want to fight the Islamic State and the forces of Islamic extremist terrorism? I’ll tell you the best way to send a message to those masked gunmen in Iraq and Syria and to everyone else who gains power by sowing violence and fear. Just keep posting that second set of images. Post them on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and in comments all over the Internet. Send them to your friends and your family. Send them to your pen pal in France and your old roommate in Tunisia. Send them to strangers.
Yes, it’s sappy. But this has always been the dream of America: a dream of freedom, of a land where no one would force their religious beliefs on anyone else. A land where all people would have the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A land where we could seek change peacefully and trust our laws and institutions to respond to our deepest hopes.
Hopefully Brooks isn’t basing her opinion on the “success” of campaigns like the #BringBackOurGirls Twitter protests against Boko Haram.
Interestingly, too, the professor says “Brutality and fear can keep people down for only so long” while invoking the Nazis, the Soviet Union, and the KKK.
Maybe if Twitter, Facebook, etc. existed during the eras in which those scourges existed, they could have assisted in the cessation of those regimes’ brutality as well, eh?
In addition to her post at Georgetown, Brooks is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and previously served as a counselor to the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy and as a senior advisor at the U.S. State Department.
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