The July `94 issue of Harper's described the case of a Menlo Park city employee who claimed in 1993 to be harassed by some paintings of female nudes hanging in a hallway. The city removed the paintings the following day. It used to be that when the majority of people in some state/county/town disapproved of some instance of expression, they could suppress it. This was bad. Nowadays, it takes just one zealot to suppress it. This is much worse. As far as I can see, anyone can claim to be harassed/threatened/offended by just about anything, and get away with it. Just the other day, I heard that in Vermont (or was it New Hampshire ?), they're still talking seriously about an amendment to the state constitution against burning the U.S. flag. Between the censors on the left and the censors on the right, there's precious little room remaining for those of us in the middle who believe in tolerating divergent views.

Toleration of divergent views is not one of those issues that breaks out well along left-right polarities. E.g., Andrea Dworkin's closest aliies on porn are on the xtian right, not among her fellow radical feminists [contrary to the image promoted in some mass media]. Threats to Catcher in the Rye in libraries are far more common than incidents like the one in Menlo Park.

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Violence against women is too real,

Strongly agreed, but a newsgroup article is not an act of violence.

Legally, that's a question yet to be resolved. In any case, this is hardly cyrpto-related. I would far rather lurk as the mathematicians discuss factoring. I learn more [even if I only get one word in three :-] =================================== Rich Dutcher, San Francisco Greens P.O. Box 77005, San Francisco, California 94107 USA "That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves." Kim Stanley Robinson, "Green Mars" Greens, of course, only enslave plants - so weed-whackers work better than cops ... ====================================