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Censorship Is Just As Bad As Homophobia By: Brian Webber on 10/20/2002; 4:17 PM Well it is! Among the small crowd of protestors outside the Grammys this past Wendsday stood a man with a sign using those very words. I agree with that brave man wholeheartedly. When Dr. Laura began speaking with all that homophobic language, did I protest? Well sort of. I never listened to her radio show anyway. I refused to watch her TV show. And look what happened! It got cancelled. Becuase of the protests and angry letters? Nope. It got canned due to lack of ratings. Same should go for Eminem. When people stop buying his albums, he'll go away. Or, to paraphrase Melissa Etheridge, "What gives me the right to say you can't say certain things, but I can say whatever I want?" That's being hippocritical. The first amendment guarantees free speech to all. Not free speech to some. As much as I hate the KKK and the Neo-Nazis, I stood by the ACLU's decision to prevent banning their presence. Call em a racist if you wish, but remember this; Not everyone in the ACLU is a heterosexual white male.
Re: Free Speech SLAPPed Silent By: Brian Carnell on 4/11/2001; 9:37 AM >The malignant growth has deviated from SLAPPs, and continues to eat away >at the life of our First Amendment rights. Legal manipulation and >mutilation jumps from one place to another, and spreads like wild fire. >The contagious assault against our Constitution has even managed to >encroach upon the text books of school children, as was demonstrated most >recently in the State of Texas. Two Republican legislators complained >about a brief article and accompanying picture of then Vice President Al >Gore appearing in a fifth grade text book. The textbook was "revised," by >the publisher, fearing the bullying tactics that have become a fine art to >legislators and lawyers alike. Normally I would agree with you, but in this case Gore got what he deserved. After all, the article that appeared in this textbook -- "Collections: Pathways To Adventure" -- was about a speech Gore gave at the Internet Online Summit for Kids. And what, pray tell, was the subject of Gore's remarks? How he was protecting kids from that mean old nasty Internet. You have to love the irony of Republicans censoring Gore's speech in favor of censorship (in part, because Texas Republicans complained that Democrats aren't censorious enough). What would have been really cool would have been if somebody had produced a video about Gore's V-Chip proposal and then Republicans had forbid schools from showing it. As far as SLAPP's, the most outrageous case I heard of was a newspaper which refused to run a letter from a woman who was extremely critical of the newspaper's political coverage (she thought they were biased against her favorite candidate). They did offer to run her letter as a paid ad. She agreed, paid the money, they ran the ad, and then the newspaper turned around and sued her for libel based on statements in the ad. Eventually the courts dismissed the lawsuit but not until after the woman had paid a lot of money in lawyer fees.
RE: Free Speech SLAPPed Silent By: Brian Carnell on 4/11/2001; 9:58 AM BTW, for anyone who is interested you can read the remarks that Gore made at the online kids summit here: http://www.kidsonline.org/archives/gore.shtml Throughout Gore keeps saying how he's not advocating censorship and wants to preserve freedom of expression, but I think the most insightful statement into Gore's thinking is: "There is a danger for this effort to degenerate into a discussion about how to avoid regulation. To be successful, it must be elevated to a discussion about how to meet the needs of America's families." Which, of course, turned out to be stuff like COPA, mandatory content filters for libraries and schools, etc.
RE: Free Speech SLAPPed Silent By: Brian Webber on 4/11/2001; 3:34 PM Which, of course, turned out to be stuff like COPA, mandatory content filters for libraries and schools, etc. If you REALLY want to block porn on Library and School computers, make sure every monitor points toward open areas. *evil grin* Let's see kids and adults try to access lesboteens.com when anybody who walks by can see you, and probably judge you?
RE: Free Speech SLAPPed Silent By: Brian Carnell on 4/11/2001; 4:03 PM Brian Webber wrote: >If you REALLY want to block porn on Library and School computers, make >sure every monitor points toward open areas. *evil grin* Let's see kids >and adults try to access lesboteens.com when anybody who walks by can see >you, and probably judge you? Now there's an idea, though there are people who have nothing better to do than be shocking. At one of the libraries here they used to have a color printer hooked up to a web terminal. Somebody used to regularly print off porn and then leave it places where people would find it. Very weird.
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