At last weekend’s National Open, I was seated next to a young player (maybe 16?) with a political sticker on the back of his clock. I won’t go into details but it was probably distasteful to a number of people (including me). I wasn’t playing him but I wondered if his opponent could have legally complained about the choice of equipment. I certainly would have tried! It doesn’t seem like a chess tournament is the appropriate place to display anything like this, regardless of your personal political opinions. Any directors out there who have come across this before?
Would you have a problem with the same thing on, say, his shirt?
I think it would be inappropriate but I respect his right to wear it. In fact, I’ve had to deal with that in our local club. I’m specifically talking about chess equipment here.
Without details, it is hard to make a judgement whether the form of political expression was appropriate. As of yet, this is still a free country. However, that does not give license to making displays that are extremely offensive to others. For example, fascist symbols, like swastikas or other NAZI symbols, have no place in a chess tournament or anywhere else; too many died fighting fascism to allow it to creep back. OTOH political campaign symbols, which will become ubiquitous during the next year and a half, may be discomfiting to see, but are going to be viewed as permissible. Unfortunately, I expect this coming election season is going to be rough on the country.
In our club, we had several rules concerning appropriate behavior. Discussions of politics, religion, or social issues were to be taken outside. Discussions of chess, arguing who is the best player of all time, opening analysis, how our teams were doing, and how to get better playing the game were fine. One could also discuss sports, until it got too heated, then the members had to take it outside. Since we had kids playing chess, members were advised to mind their manners and their use of language. These rules applied to tournaments as well. One time a member opined that he had freedom of speech. I told him there were limits and he did not have freedom of consequence for his words. It was a chess club, not a political campaign rally.
Many folks have no clue what freedom of speech actually means. Since it only applies to government prior restraint of speech it would not apply at all to speech allowed in and by your club.
Private clubs are not governmental entities subject to the same constraints as governments, state and federal, as Allen notes. I would hope that reason would prevail. In a chess club or tournament, I would ignore most political speech, but not all. As a consumer/citizen, I would raise a ruckus to the point of either withdrawing or being ejected if a Nazi or neo-Nazi sticker, tee shirt or whatever were present. Stars and Bars comes very close to my limit also. Trump supporters in the club or tournament displaying things from a campaign? I’d be more inclined to laugh out loud and mock them.
Where it can get a bit unclear is when the venue is a pubic space rented out to a private group for a tournament. What if a group of neo-Nazi chess players decided to enter a team with logos on shirts? Hmmm…
One of my fav chess playing tee shirts reads, “Sarcasm. It’s Better Than Killing People”