At 12:57 AM 9/14/00 -0400, Jodi Hoffman wrote:
You are wrong to protect them without knowing what they're about, Jay. Their motto is, "Sex before eight, or it's too late." They are referring to grown men having sex with an under-eight year old little boy. Surely you don't mean to suggest that a website promoting intercourse with a little boy should be protected speech, do you?
Ohio vs. Brandenburg. Get it through your skull. Advocacy of criminal acts is protected speech. Period. It doesn't matter how vile the concept is. One of the cornerstones of a free society is that the laws reflect the will of the people -- within certain limits -- and that ANYONE, no matter how radical or depraved, is free to try to convince the people of the rightness of his views. Whether these views advocate banning abortions, reinstating slavery, exterminating Jews, or killing baby seals is *irrelevent*. He is free to discuss them and, if anyone should offer violence against him for the content of his ideas, the State is morally obliged to protect him and punish the offender, no matter how much the ideas offend, shock, or disturb. There is no room for compromise on this. None at all. Freedom of speech is for EVERYONE, for EVERY idea, or else it is meaningless. I cannot speak for Jay, but lest there be any doubt of *my* stance, I believe a site advocating the bloody ritual murder of 1 day old infants in disgustingly gruesome fashion, coupled with vile and perverse sexual acts involving corpses, sheep, and watermelons, while giving heroin to 3 year old girls, is protected speech -- so long as the site does not cross from advocacy to incitement. Anyone *committing* such acts deserves a quick trip to "Old Sparky", but that does not limit the right to TALK about such acts at all. Hell, Jodi, I even think YOUR site is protected speech.