Posted on 01/04/2004 6:10:56 AM PST by Valin
“I wonder if I shall fall right through the Earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward!”
— Alice, from Alice in Wonderland
Thanks to three recent, startling court decisions, free speech supporters must think they’ve fallen through the center of the Earth, too, where down is up and up is down.
The first ruling was from a Circuit Court in Louisville.
Judge Stephen P. Ryan issued a last-minute order blocking a new ordinance limiting the hours adult businesses can be open. Apparently, when it comes to free speech, there can be no limits if Alice wants to take her clothes off for money.
The second ruling was from the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, it upheld a ban on unlimited donations (often called “soft money”) to political parties from corporations, unions and the wealthy. The court also let stand the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act’s ban on corporations, unions and issue groups from airing commercials that mention or depict a candidate within 30 days of a primary and 60 days of a general election.
While those who think money has too strong a grip on politics might initially cheer, anyone who has serious allegiance to free speech has to be horrified. For every millionaire whose checkbook won’t have as much clout, there’s an “issue group” of people truly committed to a cause whose speech will be similarly stifled. In a “down the rabbit hole” scene, the NRA and ACLU decried the ruling.
The third ruling came earlier this year, from Denver District Court Judge John Coughlin, as part of a shared-custody ruling concerning Dr. Cheryl Clark’s 8-year-old adopted daughter. The judge ordered Clark to “make sure that there is nothing in the religious upbringing or teaching that the minor child is exposed to that can be considered homophobic.” This was because, after splitting from her lesbian partner, the girl’s other parent, Clark became a Christian. The other mom, Elsey McLeod, objected to their daughter seeing potentially anti-homosexual family-focused pamphlets in Clark’s church.
In his dissenting opinion on the soft money ban, Justice Scalia described the looking glass through which free speech has now fallen:
“Who could have imagined that the same court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography ... tobacco advertising ... dissemination of illegally intercepted communications ... and sexually explicit programming ... would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government.”
Add to that the staggering “anti-homophobic” speech restriction ruling, which literally reaches into homes to constrain the religious instruction a parent can give a child. Want to commit sodomy in your own home? Go ahead. Your right to do so is protected by the Constitution’s implied “right to privacy.” Want to teach your children that such behaviors are against your religion? Better not, or the storm troopers will come and take your shared custody away.
Even Alice’s Wonderland wasn’t this screwed up. Next thing you know, the pork industry will be suing to limit Orthodox Jewish parents’ right to teach their kids that eating “the other white meat” is a no-no under their religious doctrine.
Replace the “straight” versus “gay” aspect of this case with any other religious dispute: atheist versus believer, Christian versus Muslim, whatever. Do we want courts deciding which religious beliefs a parent can teach her child and which she can’t?
What’s happening to the idea that the Constitution protects all forms of actual speech? We can argue whether or not the Founding Fathers would have considered the commercial exploitation of naked women as “speech” protected by the First Amendment (yeah, right).
Regardless, how can supporting a candidate through advertising not be, no matter how close to the election date the ads are run? How can the religious instruction of your own child, regardless of that religion’s beliefs, not be?
Sure, a truly unfettered definition of “free speech” means there will be lots of noise out there we’ll dislike. But speech’s value is for the listener — not the government — to decide.
A friend of mine, who was in Louisville when the Ku Klux Klan staged a rally, tells an instructive story.
During the rally, the police were there to protect the KKK’s right to spew its racist nonsense. After the rally, some civil rights activists then spoke far more eloquently, merely by getting down on their knees and scrubbing the courthouse steps where the KKK members had stood. That is the kind of contrasting free speech that makes this country great.
The way the courts are now taking us, soon the only free speech left will be strippers dressed only in campaign bumper stickers, dancing next to churches, whose racks are stripped of any “anti” pamphlets.
Now, where did I put my bucket?
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
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| 40 | Thailand | 50.00 |
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50.00 |
7 |
7.14 |
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I nominate Valin Chairman pro tem.
"In his A Book of French Quotations (1963), Norbert Guterman suggested that the probable source for the quotation was a line in a 6 February 1770 letter to M. le Riche: ``Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.''"
Congressman Billybob
Click here to stick a thumb in the eye of CFR, "Hugh & Series, Critical & Pulled by JimRob."
True, but my representative's attention has been requested.
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