|
|
 |
Posted on 06/24/2007 2:21:46 PM PDT by lowbridge
Oakland has banned a group of African-American Christian women from accessing a government e-mail and message board system because it considers them bigoted and interested in conducting hate speech. While the same systems regularly carry political statements from gay-rights groups, the city has banned the women because of the loaded language in their communications -- words such as marriage and natural family. George Will explains:
_____________________________
Marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values. That sentence is inflammatory, perhaps even a hate crime.
At least it is in Oakland, Calif. That city's government says those words, italicized here, constitute something akin to hate speech and can be proscribed from the government's open e-mail system and employee bulletin board. ...
Some African American Christian women working for Oakland's government organized the Good News Employee Association (GNEA), which they announced with a flier describing their group as "a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family Values."
The flier was distributed after other employees' groups, including those advocating gay rights, had advertised their political views and activities on the city's e-mail system and bulletin board. When the GNEA asked for equal opportunity to communicate by that system and that board, it was denied. Furthermore, the flier they posted was taken down and destroyed by city officials, who declared it "homophobic" and disruptive.
The city government said the flier was "determined" to promote harassment based on sexual orientation. The city warned that the flier and communications like it could result in disciplinary action "up to and including termination."
______________________________
Gee, I wonder how that happened? It couldn't be that our high degree of sensitivity has caused us to treat dissent as a crime, and act hysterically when offended, could it?
Of course it did. We have been marching down this road for several years now, starting with campus speech codes in the 1980s to campaign-finance reform and hate crimes legislation that makes motive a worse offense than the actual crime itself. Free speech used to have more defenders than attackers, but not any more. And once we decided that the content of speech should get evaluated and suppressed if found wanting, it has opened the door to greater expansion of thought-police activities.
In this case, the thought police got a large boost from the joke of the appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit. Amazingly, they determined that the GNEA's "vanishingly small" speech interest wasn't worth protecting. They approved of non-neutral content exclusions by a government agency that allows them to approve certain political speech while excluding others -- setting up Oakland's government as an arbiter of acceptable political beliefs.
Expect the Supreme Court to pin their collective ears back on appeal. Oakland could have avoided the entire issue by forbidding any use of their systems for anything other than job-related communications. Failing that, they have to show how using the terms marriage and natural family present any kind of threat to anyone in the workplace. They obviously cannot, but they apparently want to ban both concepts from the workings of the city anyway.
We have entered a dangerous stage for free speech. It's fine to take offense at speechm, and to protest it when we do. Commercial actions such as boycotts work within the free speech market, although some may be overwrought. Demanding government interaction to silence groups like the GNEA, P-FLAG, NRA, NARAL, and so on is a demand for an end to free speech. If the Ninth Circuit can't figure that out, then thank God for the Supreme Court.
When good is bad and right is wrong........
I’m “mildly” surprised at this since a common response of the gay lobby is “me too” i.e. “hey our desire is natural too so of course we have a natural family.” But they are showing that they can’t contain their hatred and venom, and this is going to blow up in their faces.
Censorship is a many-edged sword. Giving that sword to the government means that you may be cut with it. This is why I consistently oppose any and all restrictions on speech. The language of the First Ammendment is absolute. None of the exceptions the courts have allowed can be found anywhere in the text of the Constitution. Cases like this are an example of why the Framers wrote it that way.
|
|
|
There goes the Ninth Circuit again, SCOTUS spends the majority of their time vacating their appeals.
This is what happens when an appelate court is ruled by emotions only - stupid decisions that have no legal basis.
Marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values. That sentence is inflammatory, perhaps even a hate crime.
That sentence is actually a threat to everything they are trying to accomplish and have accomplished so far. The extreme hard core and their allies in places like Oakland and the 9th Curcit know they wither quickly under the spotlight of what is right and wrong. Take the “Gay Pride” events here in Atlanta this weekend. The media breathlessly announces them as though it was the greatest thing to happen in many years. Yet the sheer perversion of it all is buried deep by saying it is “just another lifestyle” and so on and so forth. As much as this concept is hateful to them and their cause, an almighty and just God is watching and He will have his way once He is ready. In the meantime, those of us who believe in the traditional family will have to endure the actual hate and sneers from the “elite” of the world who will someday wonder what happened to them once God unsheaths his rightous wrath.
“Oakland has banned a group of African-American Christian women from accessing a government e-mail and message board system because it considers them bigoted and interested in conducting hate speech.”
Will Fat-ass Al Sharpless or Jesse JAK! come to their rescue? Nah, only if there’s a payoff involved.
The astounding thing about this Ninth Circuit decision is that the Supreme Court decided two cases in the 1990s where it clearly said governments cannot restrict access to generally available public facilities based on the content of material people are going to be presenting.
But I thought Black people cannot be bigoted because they don’t have the power?
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
