On Feb 18, 1996 22:15:00, '"E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>' wrote:
From: IN%"declan+@CMU.EDU" "Declan B. McCullagh" 17-FEB-1996 18:07:51.71
A lawsuit against the atheist would not be effective and could result in a countersuit for abuse of process.
Huh? You seem to have misinterpreted what I said. The atheist, who has a child that reads the net, sues a Christian Fundamentalist organization (say, one of the Southern Baptist seminaries) for having a copy of the Bible - which contains material that is among the "seven dirty words" or whatever - online, where the child can read it. The CDA essentially says that a child reading
indecent materials is doing harm to the child (a nice bit of nonsense), which gives the government the (undeserved) power to regulate such interactions.
A countersuit will be somewhat difficult, since the organization in question (the one with the Bible online) is breaking the law; while there have been
burglar suing because of broken leg cases, I believe that such are generally thrown out - possibly due to laws on the subject. Now, the jury won't find the seminary or whoever liable... but it would create some publicity and tie the sued organization up for a while. It's something that I'd encourage an atheist organization to sponsor. -Allen
On a personal and emotional level I *love* the idea of watching a group of pro-CDA fundie christers having to sweat in court explaining how their support for things like incest and murder are protected under the First Amendment but other people's speech is not. But on a logical level, should we use (or advocate) the court system under CDA-related topics. I think not. Allen's post has great emotional appeal, but it creates at least one danger. The first is the hypocrisy involved in advocating something with which we disagree, like asking the courts to support CDA and use CDA to punish those we don't like. The second is creating an Orwellian doublethink in politics where we first advocate something, like useing the courts. Then, when challenged (about hypocrisy or anything else) turn around and state that we really did not adovate what we so clearly did advocate or that we did not "mean" what we so clearly said. Ultimately, we reinforce a form of political behavior where nobody is responsible for their political behavior and nobody expects to be held accountable for it. Witness the behavior of people like Rep. Shroeder who voted for CDA etc. including the anti-abortion aspects, but does not want this to count among the pro-choice crowd because she didn't "really" vote for CDA etc. to get it to limit abortions. --tallpaul "Encryption? It is a Satanic drug thing. You wouldn't understand."