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Originally Posted by JR
they do make the laws right? everyone does. laws are the product of elected officials representing the will of their consituents. laws can be amended and rescinded anytime.
i love this conversation because it highlights exactly what you just said and what has already been before the supreme court.... protecting speech means protecting a lot of things you might find vulgar or offensive. its just not a black and white issue. it can't be. in fact, there often seems to be more gray than anything and that is really what the discussion is about.
people are arguing about what is appropriate, innapropriate and so on... and forgetting the basic point either you draw a line somewhere in determining what speech is protected... or you have no line at all. and you have to ask yourself what is a better world... a world where ones right to express themself is absolutely protected or a world where someone is deciding for you, what is appropriate, what is innapropriate, what is offensive, what is acceptable, what is unnaceptable and so on. and once you accept that, you will have to accept that those boundaries might move in ways you never considered they might.
do i think that writing about a person fingering a 6 month old infant objectionable? of course i do. should he be able to write about it? yes, i think so.
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I was going to edit what I quoted so this wouldn't be such a huge post...but I decided not to leave out a word.
To protect all of us, there must be no "line." To protect our own rights, we must also protect the rights of people who want to make us vomit.
I referenced earlier the ACLU fighting for the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois...which happens to be the home of a great many Holocaust survivors. This was sickening. However, one of our basic rights is "freedom of assembly." All laws were followed by the Nazis with regard to getting permits, etc. People filed suit to stop it. I imagine the ACLU folks were nauseated beyond belief, but when you set yourself up to defend civil liberties...you have to defend *everyone's* civil liberties, not just the "nice people's" civil liberties.
A very long time ago I nearly hit a telephone pole in Louisville, Kentucky. Attached to said pole was the flyer that marked it as the route of the KKK march that coming Saturday. (School integration had just hit town.) They marched, and my neighbor - an amateur photographer - took pictures. He showed them to me. They were in black and white, just like the pics I saw in books from the 50's...but this was the 70's.
They have the same right to feedom of assembly as the Mayor of Louisville had when he organized his "anti-hate" rally. The Mayor's rally got a much bigger turnout than the KKK march.
The black and white part of this is that either we *all* have rights...or *nobody* has rights.