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

[Ray Dillinger]

On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, 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?


Madam, it has nothing to do with what the website promotes.  I think 
that a website which a browser can display ought to be protected 
speech.  

If nothing else, it will supply material for dozens of Ph.D theses 
in psychology.  And yes, given the choice between an absolute law 
protecting speech and a law which can be constantly reinterpreted 
depending on the feelings and intestinal gas of the judges and juries 
involved and the ability of one side or another to spin a tear-jerker, 
I'll take the absolute law any day of the week.  

But there's something more important going on here than that. 

You don't achieve a sane culture by refusing to permit the 
insane voices within it to speak.  You achieve a sane culture by 
learning to understand the insanity within it and putting it in 
a sane context.  And you can't do that if you shut 'em up. 

You're upset because people you disagree with have been given a 
voice.  You figure you speak for society at large here and you're 
defending "polite society's" monopoly on speech.  Well, I gotta 
tell you, "polite society's" monopoly on speech would never have 
tolerated me, a few years ago or in a different place, so I am 
predisposed to believe that monopoly is a bad idea.  

			Bear

I hate to quote myself, but right now it seems appropriate: 
---

 There have always been a number of perverts, libertines, harlots, sluts,
 philanderers, pornographers, and other persons of loose moral virtue in
 society.  But prior to the internet, it was much, much more difficult
 for us to locate and identify each other. -- Ray Dillinger