I used to run a really neat email list. I sought out writers, and later readers, who were as frustrated as I was by our mainstream publishing world. It didn’t have a formal name. If anyone called it anything, they called it Jamie’s email list. About as informal as it gets.
It ran along merrily, spawning all kinds of conversations about craft, politics, and the intersection between them. Many of our writers were published, and many others got published while we were having our years-long conversation (until it morphed into the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction alliance, or CLFA, but that's another story). It was thoughtful, sometimes sharp, often funny, incredibly smart, and usually generous. I asked only one thing of the group: that people speak truly, candidly, and from the heart.
Then one day I rocked the boat.
I found a writer who was, by any reasonable measure, perfect for our crew. She was smart, talented, serious about craft, and deeply thoughtful. She also happened to be a lesbian. I didn’t care. I am interested in ideas, not private lives. I live by Jesus’s principle “love the sinner, hate the sin,” and I saw no contradiction in inviting someone whose thinking I admired, even if I didn’t care for every aspect of her personal life.
She hesitated, not because she doubted the group, but because she understood it better than I did. She asked me to check first.
So I did.
The reaction split the list — not unpredictably, in retrospect. The people who objected were largely the ones I would have expected, with one or two exceptions. What surprised me was not the disagreement. I was ready for a little pushback. The list was full of people who spoke passionately about free speech and open inquiry. Argument was not only allowed; it was the point.
What I did not anticipate was escalation. Some people didn’t just argue. They threatened to quit.
That moment taught me something important. Many people believe in free speech as a principle. Far fewer believe in the consequences of free speech.
They were comfortable with dissent as long as it remained abstract, an exchange of views among familiar voices. What unsettled them was not anything this writer had said; she hadn’t said anything yet. It was her possible future presence. Speech had moved from theory to reality. A real person with a real history had entered the room.
Threatening to quit is not an argument. It is leverage. It makes honesty expensive. It says: this conversation can continue only if it stays within boundaries I don’t have to defend out loud.
That doesn’t mean those people were acting in bad faith. I think all of them sincerely believed in free speech. What they discovered, much to their own surprise as well as everyone else's, was the edge of their commitment. They believed in speaking freely, but not in sharing space freely; once speech produced discomfort, they couldn’t easily resolve it.
I invited the writer anyway. The majority were on my side, and I don't think I could have continued participating honestly if I had withdrawn the invitation. It would have betrayed who I am.
She joined cautiously, fully aware of the fault lines she was stepping into and also of the fact that she had people who would defend and support her. She turned out to be exactly what I’d hoped: thoughtful, careful, insightful, and smart. She didn’t smuggle in bad ideas. Her sexuality hardly came up. She didn’t demand agreement. She contributed. And the conversations were better for it.
Some people left, at least for a while (most came back, and I left the door open for them, welcoming them without condemning). Others stayed. The group didn’t collapse. It clarified.
That experience shaped everything I’ve built since.
A serious intellectual community cannot optimize for comfort. It cannot be a Big Tent that waves everyone through in the name of harmony, nor can it survive purity tests that exile people for imperfect alignment. Both avoid judgment, the first by refusing to say no, the other by refusing to say enough.
I am not interested in managing coalitions. I am interested in cultivating minds and sparking thought and conversation. I have no problem with drawing red lines and enforcing them; when we do not consciously curate our beliefs, we believe everything — and nothing. We drift, absorbing whatever is loudest or most convenient. And when we drift, we are susceptible to whatever current is strongest.
I don’t care who people sleep with, so long as it does not cross legal lines or interfere with our conversations. I care whether they can think clearly, argue honestly, and contribute something real. I trust my principles enough to hear ideas I disagree with. I trust my discernment enough to recognize bad ones, like antisemitism, when they appear and push back, shut down, or dissociate from them. And I'm fully aware that this may alienate some people. I'm okay with that, too. We must all follow our consciences.
For me, though, it's all about love the sinner and hate the sin. Judge ideas and don’t hunt people. Select for quality, not traits, or be selected against by reality.
That email list taught me this, among many other valuable things: free speech is not tested by words alone. It is tested by our choices once real human beings enter the room.
