CDR: Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?

[Lizard]

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.