Start with Truth: A Response to Ryan Hainlin

The long arc of history bends towards truth

I have always encouraged debate here, even with—perhaps especially with—those with whom I disagree deeply. In fact, some might characterize the essence of what I do here on Notorious to be engaging in debate, in the hope that we might arrive at understanding.

Ryan Hainlin, whom I do not know and do not believe I have ever met, wrote what he called a “reality-based rebuttal” to my last post, which spread the good news that Texas will soon be giving the death penalty to NAR’s Speech Code. Ryan is a huge fan of the NAR Speech Code. He is also the founder and former CEO of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance. I understand that he is new to Substack as he recently retired from the Alliance and is now free to opine publicly.

Because he wrote a serious post—flawed, misguided and full of bad faith, but serious—I think it deserves a response. This is not a political blog, unlike Ryan’s, so I have no interest in a back-and-forth on social and political issues. But I do think it fair to spend one post doing so.

Again, this will be a public post as it is of interest to many, and since Ryan’s post was open to the public.

Some Things Are Absolute

Let me start by stating my position clearly.

I am a businessman. Most things are negotiable, and still others are practical sometimes and not practical other times. I am not ideological the way the modern left in the United States is. I know this, because I used to be very much on the left as a dedicated Marxist. I understand how leftists think, because I was one of them for a substantial part of my young adult life.

Then, I grew up. In the real world, rather than the fantasy world of Gramsci, Marcuse, Fanon and critical race studies, which yes, I studied. Turns out, some things are absolute, like hard reality. They are not subject to negotiation, to politics, to feelings, to anybody else’s consent.

It took 9/11 to wake me the fuck up out of my fantasyland. Turns out, words are not violence. Violence is violence. Airplanes crashing into buildings and thousands of people burning to death is violence. Turns out, reality exists.

There is a similar reality to being human. There are absolutes. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to us; it merely recognizes the reality of them as inherent in all people. Free speech and freedom of association, right of self-defense, the right to be free from search and seizure—these were not given to us by the government, merely recognized by the Founders.

But of all of these absolutes, the two most important are freedom of conscience—as recognized by the First Amendment in worship, speech and assembly—and self-defense, as recognized by the Second. I do not apologize for considering them so. They are so fundamental that I do not believe a person loses those rights simply because of a job. Getting a real estate license does not suspend a human being’s freedom of conscience. Being forced to join a private organization to access a necessary utility for the job does not mean you no longer have the right to your own beliefs, your own opinions, and your own speech.

Liberals used to understand that. The ACLU used to defend the right of Neo-Nazis to march through Jewish neighborhoods. But the current crop of bizarre authoritarians on the left only understands power and control. They are saddened to lose one such lever of power and control in the NAR Speech Code.

Hence, the rebuttal from Ryan.

Ryan’s Post and Counterpoints

First, I encourage you to go read his full post, titled “When Free Speech Becomes a Shield for Hate.” Not because I endorse it, as I definitely do not, but open debate requires that both sides be heard. I will do my best to outline his main points, and provide a counter.

He begins his post with a quote from an unnamed source:

“There is a profound difference between protecting the right to believe—and endorsing the right to harm. In a profession built on trust, decency must outweigh grievance.”

I find the quote ironic. He’s right—no one should endorse the right to harm. Decency must outweigh grievance.

We’ll come back to this.

Freedom Ends Where Safety Begins

Ryan begins thus:

The First Amendment was never meant to be a blunt weapon. It protects speech from government censorship—not from consequence, not from accountability, and certainly not from moral scrutiny. Like any freedom, speech ends where another’s safety begins.

This simple truth appears to be lost on a growing number of voices—loud, angry, and cloaked in grievance—who confuse oppression with inconvenience. Leading that chorus in the real estate industry is Rob Hahn, a long-time commentator whose latest crusade argues that Realtors should have the unfettered right to express views that may, and often do, undermine the dignity and safety of the very people we serve.

First place to start, I suppose, is noting something that is fundamental to and inherent in Ryan’s position. It is a common problem among the progressive left: safetyism. “Free speech ends where another’s safety begins.” As we will see, that term “safety” has escaped the normal meaning of the word so that it can serve Ryan’s political and rhetorical purposes.

Second, I think that people like Brandon Huber, Wilson Fauber, Chad DeVries and Jamie Haynes—people who have lost careers, lost friends, lost their professions, lost their property because of personal beliefs expressed on their own time, outside of real estate—are leading that chorus. I am doing a very small part. All real credit goes to those real warriors for freedom, who are paying an extremely heavy price for us all.

Is Ryan Simply Mistaken? Or is He Lying?

Ryan then recites the irrelevant-here narrative about redlining, about racial discrimination, about gaps in black homeownership, about LGBTQ homeownership, and talk about housing discrimination or bias.

That narrative is completely irrelevant because no one—not me, not Brandon, Wilson, Chad, Jamie or anyone else on the freedom side of the fence—has suggested that discrimination is okay. Yet, it gets brought up every time by the anti-freedom side. Why?

The reason is that they know in their heart of hearts that no one would accept their real argument: “We want to shut people up who say things we don’t like.” Americans simply won’t accept that. So they have to do the red herring, the straw man, the bait-and-switch while ignoring what it is that we free speech proponents actually say.

I have to question Ryan’s intellectual honesty here. Because only one of two things are true: he doesn’t know, or he doesn’t care. Either way, his arguments fail.

Article 10, SoP 10-5, and Intentional Misleading

Let’s start with SoP 10-5, the Speech Code, the rule that is at the heart of all this.

Ryan either does not know what SoP 10-5 is or does… or doesn’t care, and chooses to lie and obfuscate about it. He and others continuously elide 10-5 into Article 10 in order to transform an unethical, immoral, and unjustifiable restriction on free speech and freedom of conscience into a “non-discrimination” issue.

Article 10 of the Code was put into place in 1974, after the Fair Housing Act of 1968. It did not then, and does not now, contain any kind of restriction on free speech.

In fact, here is the entire text of Article 10 today:

REALTORS® shall not deny equal professional services to any person for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. REALTORS® shall not be parties to any plan or agreement to discriminate against a person or persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. (Amended 1/23)

REALTORS®, in their real estate employment practices, shall not discriminate against any person or persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. (Amended 1/23)

It is very clear that Article 10 deals with delivery of professional services in real estate, and employment practices. It prohibits discrimination in both spheres, as it should.

SoP 10-5 was put into place in 2020, after the George Floyd riots and the Summer of Love, when political correctness was at its height. Corporations and institutions bent the knee to now-discredited organizations.

Here is SoP 10-5 in full:

REALTORS® must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. (Adopted and effective November 13, 2020, Amended 1/23)

Of particular importance is the lack of any connection to real estate, to the provision of professional services, or to employment practices. The word “discrimination” does not appear in 10-5, because 10-5 isn’t about discrimination. The word “safety” does not appear in 10-5, because 10-5 isn’t about client or public safety. It is about “harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs.”

In other words, 10-5 is simply about controlling the speech of REALTORS.

It was always, from the beginning, intended to apply outside of professional practice, outside of real estate. From the archives of Arizona REALTORS:

When one Realtor posts discriminatory speech or conduct online, that content becomes reflective of Realtors on the whole. Left unchecked, those statements become who we are as an organization, and further reinforce the barriers to homeownership experienced by so many Americans

Never mind that the connection between discriminatory speech online and barriers to homeownership is unexplained. Never mind that Article 10 already prohibits barriers to homeownership, as does Federal and many State laws. The point from the very start was to police activities of REALTORS, even though such activities have nothing to do with real estate, with professional practice.

So for Ryan to keep justifying controls on speech by constantly falling back on Article 10—which is not in any kind of controversy, has been around since 1974, and is widely embraced by all REALTORS of all political persuasions—is intentionally misleading.

It is intentionally misleading because Ryan knows precisely what 10-5 is and does, and how it is meant to be used. We’ll get to that below.

Victims of the Speech Code: Does Ryan Not Know? Or Does He Not Care?

Let us move on to the next major problem. Ryan either doesn’t know a thing about any of the REALTORS who are fighting the NAR Speech Code, or does know and doesn’t care.

Given his past history, I think the answer is that he doesn’t care. We’ll get to that.

I have recorded lengthy podcasts with Brandon Huber, Chad DeVries and Wilson Fauber. Ryan apparently never watched any of those, or he has and doesn’t care.

If Ryan would like to win the argument, and wants to paint these people as “loud, angry and cloaked in grievance”, it would help to start by telling the truth about these individuals and their supposed crimes. It would help if he can point out all the angry, loud and hateful words and actions of these people.

Since he won’t tell the truth, I must. I invite you to to go watch my interviews with them: Brandon Huber, Wilson Fauber, Chad DeVries. Don’t take my word for it; make up your own mind about these individuals.

But let me spend some words here as well, since truth is like sunlight.

Brandon Huber does not have an unkind bone in his body. I don’t know if the man is capable of hate; I don’t think he hates those who have oppressed him using the Speech Code. His crime? His hate? He wrote a letter to his church congregation explaining why they were terminating a lunch program with the Missoula Food Bank:

This year, as well as the past two years, we have partnered with the Missoula Food Bank for the “Kids Eat Free” summer lunch program. This has been a great honor for us to be able to support the kids and families in our community with these meals throughout the summer months. This past week we found printed material in the lunches that we were handing out, that went against our biblical doctrine. After conversations with the food bank, we have found out that our beliefs and that of the Missoula Food Bank do not align. Due to this, Clinton Community Church has decided to end our partnership with the Missoula food bank effective today July 2, 2021.

That’s it. That’s the letter. By the way, in the same letter, Brandon went out of his way to emphasize that his church was not motivated by any kind of animus or hate:

Clinton Community Church wants our community to know that we love and support each and every one of you, no matter your background or where you are in life. As a church we strive to show the love of Jesus in all we do throughout this community, while standing up for biblical principles, biblical truths, and our beliefs. It is our goal to continue to serve the FREE lunches to kids in our community.

Indeed, Huber’s church did in fact start its own summer lunch program so local kids would not go without.

Where’s the hate? Where are the epithets? Whose safety is threatened by this?

If you’d like to see hate in action, this might be a better example:

“They warrant Huber’s immediate removal as a Realtor and membership of all related Realtor groups,” Weyandt added. “We have also encouraged Windermere Real Estate to end its affiliation with him.”

Weyandt here is Ryan Weyandt Hainlin, who wrote the post I am responding to. He was then-CEO of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance. They sent a letter demanding that Huber be kicked out of the Association and that Windermere fire him. For writing a letter to his church.

In a media interview, Ryan was upset that the ethics case might be delayed due to Huber’s lawsuit against NAR. He wanted Huber punished right the hell now.

Loud, angry and cloaked in grievance? Does that better describe Brandon Huber, or Ryan Weyandt?

Let’s move on to Chad DeVries. Chad has had a very successful practice for thirty years without a whiff of complaint or controversy. He has won awards from his local Association for public service. He has two gay children married to gay partners, all of whom he loves very much. He has gay clients, who found his social media posts hilarious, and think the speech code is ridiculous. His sin? Sharing memes on his personal Instagram account.

Nothing to do with discrimination in housing, nothing to do with professional services, nothing to do with “barriers to homeownership.”

Wilson Fauber spent forty-five years serving clients of all colors, backgrounds, sexual preferences, religions. Spotless record. Zero hint of discrimination. If you hear Fauber speak for five minutes, you come to recognize that “loud and angry” simply cannot be applied to the man.

His crime? Posting this image on his personal Facebook page in 2015, long before 10-5 was promulgated:

I don’t know Jamie Haynes, but I suspect she’s also a pillar of the community who has never been brought up on ethics charges, who has never discriminated against anybody in her life. Her crime? Speaking politely and civilly at a school board meeting as a mother of a child in that school district. No epithets, no harassing speech, nothing but the kind of protest that any parent upset with the school board might register.

Not one of them was ever brought up on charges of discrimination in a transaction. Not one was accused of discrimination in employment practices.

It takes real intellectual lack of candor to frame what they did as “hate” and yet, here we are. Because when you can’t tell the truth, you just call people hateful and hope it sticks.

All of these people 100% agree with Article 10. They embrace a Code of Ethics that prohibits discrimination of any kind in real estate and professional services. There is literally no debate on that.

In fact, all of them would likely agree to some kind of penalty if a Realtor were to use “hate speech” in a real estate context. If Wilson Fauber had started quoting the Bible to a non-Christian gay client while showing a house, none of us—including Wilson—would have an issue with whatever penalty got handed down.

What NAR and Ryan want to police are their personal communications done outside of real estate. Their real crimes, you see, are not what they said, but who they are: conservative Christians. In two of the three cases I have highlighted, these men were specifically targeted because they ran for public office.

So not only were the hate campaigns against Wilson and Chad spurious harassment, they were partisan political attacks. And loud, angry and cloaked in grievance activists leveraged a trade association to do so.

Ryan can’t tell the truth about them, about what they did, about the NAR Speech Code, or why he hates them so much because truth destroys his entire narrative.

Membership in a Private Association

Ryan then brings up something that other closed-minded, illiberal, and short-sighted fans of censorship in real estate love to say:

Membership in a private association isn’t a constitutional guarantee—it’s an application process. Just like joining a country club, being part of a professional trade group means agreeing to follow the rules. You’re told those rules upfront. And if you can’t—or won’t—abide by them, you’re free to leave.

When NAR first passed the Speech Code, I wrote a long post recommending an alternative. Part of it is because I am a free speech absolutist. The best way to combat “bad” speech is good speech, not censorship. I believe I am providing an example of what that looks like right here, right now.

But the other part, at least in 2020, was that I could see where things were going to go and I wanted to preserve what the industry had built over a hundred years.

Well, we are going there and fast.

During the hearing in the Texas Senate, one of the senators specifically called out NAR’s control over the MLS, a necessary utility for real estate agents to be in business. And he suggested that perhaps Texas can build its own MLS to take that away from NAR.

Ignore the fact that the senator doesn’t know how the MLS works, how it’s owned, and how it’s governed. What is important is the intent.

Ryan and others are fond of saying that if you don’t want to abide by the Code of Ethics, which includes a Speech Code, then you don’t have to join.

Brandon, Wilson, Chad, Jamie and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other REALTORS agree. They don’t want to join a club that treats conservatives and Christians like second-class members. They have zero desire to be part of a club that polices their private speech, private social media accounts, and then fine them or haul them up before a Star Chamber to be insulted and browbeat, then forced to attend “diversity training” for penance. They only join to get access to the MLS. They would stop being REALTORS tomorrow if they could just get the MLS.

Ryan and his allies will get what they want: the REALTOR Association as a private club with whatever rules they want. It will be completely divorced from the MLS. Then they can turn the REALTOR Association into the censorious uber-HOA board policing private speech and private action all they want. No one else would care.

But as long as the Association controls a necessary utility for a licensed profession—licensed not by Ryan and his buddies, or by NAR, but by the state—then it is not actually free to make whatever rules it wants.

If country clubs controlled access to a necessary tool for doctors to make a living, I guarantee you that the state would not allow that country club to make whatever rule it wants.

So get out of here with that “private association” nonsense, until you give up the MLS, lockboxes, and forms. Become a truly private club, then do whatever you want.

Words Are Not Violence

A fundamental disagreement between Ryan and me is that we do not agree on the meaning of the word “violence.” In one section, he writes:

And for those claiming this is a war on faith: it’s not. I was raised Catholic. I’m a proud practicing Presbyterian. I believe deeply in the power of faith to heal and unify. But I also believe that any faith requiring violence—verbal, physical, social, professional—against another human being is not a faith rooted in love. It’s a religion of control, and I reject it.

It is a matter of leftist faith that “violence” does not mean just violence. They believe there can be such a thing as verbal or social violence. It is why our society has things like trigger warnings and safe spaces. It is why rioters feel justified in using actual violence against speakers on college campuses. If words are violence, then violence in return is justified. If an expression of faith is social violence, then that does indeed threaten someone’s safety.

Perhaps Ryan truly believes that when Wilson Fauber posts an image on Facebook of a Bible verse, that he is assaulting gay people. If so, it is only because he lives in a fantasy world steeped in and created by his ideology.

Rational people who live in the real world recognize that a picture is not violence. No one was assaulted by happening to glimpse that image, or reading those words. Not a single gay person’s safety was threatened by a photo. You don’t have to like those words, and can in fact disagree mightily with the message they send. You were not assaulted. Your dignity is intact, as is your safety.

So when Ryan writes things like, “The right to speak must never outweigh another person’s right to live safely and equally” he is suffering from a serious delusion about reality. Words do not ever impact a person’s right to live safely and equally.

Actions do.

Such as punishing a man for his personal speech, depriving him of access to a necessary tool for practicing real estate, then writing a letter demanding that his brokerage fire him.

Such as sending death threats (which is not protected speech under any First Amendment jurisprudence) to a pastor who happens to be a REALTOR.

Such as forcing a woman to attend a struggle session filled with White Guilt 101 and communist propaganda, or lose access to the MLS, for the crime of speaking before a school board.

Such as dragging a man into kangaroo court, forcing him to spend tens of thousands of dollars on hiring attorneys, for the sin of sharing memes on his personal social media.

Those actions impact a person’s right to live safely and equally.

Which is why Ryan’s quote at the beginning of his post is so ironic. He and his authoritarian friends are free to believe what they want to believe; I will go to bat for them to spout their nonsense anywhere and everywhere they want.

But there is a profound difference between protecting Ryan’s right to believe what he wants and say what he wants, and endorsing the right to harm conservatives and Christians. He does not have that right, and he certainly does not have the right to leverage a trade association and its MLS to do so. In a profession built on trust, not only between the consumer and the professional but between professionals, decency must outweigh whatever grievance that Ryan and his allies feel against Christians and conservatives.

Consider this: In all of this brouhaha, all of this conflict, all of this disharmony and infighting, who are the people who have been harmed? Not merely had their “dignity” undermined, or their feelings hurt, but actually harmed?

As far as I know, not a single LGBTQ person has stepped forward to say he had to sell his farm to fund a lawyer because of what some REALTOR said on Facebook. Not a single Black REALTOR has reported losing a job, or hanging up his license, because of “hate speech” by a white woman.

At least four Christian conservative REALTORS have. And there are more; they just didn’t choose to make their fights public.

Who is endorsing harm to whom here? Who is letting their grievances and political ideology outweigh common sense and common decency?

Who is doing the hating on whom?

The Arc of History Bends Towards Truth

Let me wrap up here, because enough is enough.

Ryan makes bad faith arguments, based on obfuscation and lies. He called my first post propaganda, but his response is textbook propaganda since it is not based on truth. Frankly, his arguments cannot be based on truth, since truth eviscerates what he wants to push. It is infinitely amusing that he called his drivel “reality-based.”

I could be charitable and suggest that perhaps Ryan simply doesn’t know the truth, except that his angry and hate-filled letter to Brandon Huber’s local Association and brokerage shows that he does know, and simply doesn’t care. The point was not justice, or hate speech, or harassment; the point was to punish a straight white male Christian pastor for the crime of opposing the gay activist agenda.

Ryan talks about free speech mattering, but justice matters more. Nay, on the contrary, without free speech, there is no justice. There can be no justice without freedom of speech and conscience. There is only oppression, silencing, censorship, finger wagging, and moral posturing… because the other side is prevented from talking.

Texas is about to kill NAR’s Speech Code dead. Ryan is distressed, as he should be, since his control freak agenda can’t work anymore. On the other hand, I am ready to throw a party for the victory of freedom over control, for victory of free speech and freedom of conscience.

The arc of history is long, but it bends towards truth. Reality is undefeated. You can think identity politics is the most important thing in the world, and hate on conservatives and Christians, and talk about “dignity and safety” all you want… until planes fly into buildings and murder everybody regardless of their race, gender, sexual preference, ideology, or voting habits. Then you realize words are not violence, and ideology is not reality.

Then you realize that only our common humanity binds us together. You might one day come to recognize that trying to deny a fundamental human right like freedom of speech and conscience in the name of social justice and safety puts you on the wrong side of history indeed.

Start with truth. You will end up in reality.

-rsh