From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Citecheck Hell)
Subject: Re: Minneapolis Hate Speech Ordinance 
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 21:17:04 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.194124.26838@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges) writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.170613.22678@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>>Well, how about your continued misrepresentation of the Minneapolis
>>statute?
>
>Ted, if I felt it was an error I would have retracted it.  But I read
>the statute when the case came before the Supreme Court and I did not
>feel it was unconstitutional then and I don't feel it's unconstitutional
>now.  I felt then that it merely enhanced penalties for existing torts
>and crimes and I feel that way now, since placing an abusive sign on
>your own property is a form of assault when you know full well it will
>seriously harm blacks, Jews, or women.  

You used the word "enhanced" again.  Creating a new crime is not "enhancing"
existing penalties.

>Futhermore, if I were to engage in more frequent retractions, either of
>necessity (thorugh failure to do my homework, as Carl Kadie failed), 

Ed, you've failed to do your homework so many times, that you have no
business flaming Carl for posting a mistake he corrected within two hours.
Among other things you have yet to apologize or correct yourself for:

- You flamed me for calling Groucho Marx "Julius"

- I won't go into the rest of the vaudeville thread, which was ludicrous,
  but you were mistaken there, too.

- You still haven't read R.A.V., and constantly misattribute positions to
  the decision that the Court didn't take.

- You made several mistakes in referring to the MIT case.

- Your attack of Posner's work on law and economics based on a sentence in
  a book that had nothing to do with law and economics.

>>No, it isn't.  Not under any definition of assault used in the last
>>five hundred years in the legal community.
>
>Wrong.  Assault is the creation of a belief in another's mind that he
>or she is at immediate risk of being harmed.  

Wrong.  It's the creation of a *reasonable* belief of being at immediate
risk of being harmed.  And the word immediate should be emphasized, also.

>Nazi displays on one's
>lawn create this belief in Jewish passersby; burning crosses create
>this belief in the minds of blacks; pornographic displays create this
>belief in the minds of women passersby.  A reading of tort law taken
>literally lends itself immediately to this interpretation, and it's only
>the sexism and racism of law professors that cause law students to read
>the typical tort as occuring between two white adult males.  

A reading of tort law literally does no such thing.  How much tort law
have you read, Ed?

A says to B: "I'm going to kill you tonight."  No assault.

C says to D: "If it were not assize time, I'd run my sword through you."
	No assault.

For that matter, I can't recall a single tort case I had that said the
"typical tort occurred between two white adult males."  We spent too
much time on nuisance law, products liability, negligence, issues of
minors, and the like to have the majority of tort cases occur between
two white adult males.  For that matter, I don't think race arose once
in the class.

>In other
>words, when you read your casebooks, you form a picture of two
>INDIVIDUALS whereas in the abstract a tort or crime can be one-many: one
>perpetrator, many victims.

Your mind-reading is as inaccurate as usual.  Can you even name a single
casebook?

>>>Marching through a
>>>Jewish neighborhood with Nazi regalia is assault on every Jew in that
>>>neighborhood.  
>>
>>It's obnoxious, it's offensive, but it's not an assault.
>
>Oh?  And if I find out where Judge Richard Posner teaches, walk up to
>him after class and call him, to his face, an asshole, what's that?
>Speech?  

Yep.  Ignorant speech, obnoxious speech, offensive speech, but speech none
the less.

>No.  The guy would either punch me out, and expect to be
>released from any legal action (since I ASSAULTED the guy), or he'd sue
>my butt for ASSAULT.  

I don't think Posner would bring frivolous suits when he didn't have a
cause of action.  It's not an assault.

>>I know that, Ed.  You know that.  Now write a law that can ban one without
>>resulting in the ban of the other.  Can't be done--we live in a world where
>>there are more people offended by OBOB than Hustler.  Once you ban one,
>>you remove the opportunity for protection of the other.
>
>This is a threat (let us have Hustler, then MAYBE you can have OBOS)
>rather than a statement of fact.  And your statement that there are more
>people offended by Our Bodies, Our Selves than Hustler is absolutely
>heart-breaking.  It's untrue, but it shows (in its utter fantasy) that
>YOU are more offended by OBOS than Hustler.  

Ed, you owe me an apology.  The only thing that offends me right now
is your baseless ad hominems.

>This means that you'd
>rather see pictures of women bound and gagged than pictures of women
>determining how to live their own lives.  I sorta knew that many folks
>are offended by self-determining people, but this still shocks and
>disgusts me.

What disgusts me is how you insist on insulting me rather than discussing
the valid point I made--we don't live in a world where we can successfully
ban pornography without banning just about every homosexual-rights magazine,
and most feminist literature.

>A distinction CAN be drawn.  The distinction WAS drawn in the St Paul
>statute, and in the MacKinnon antiporn statutes.  

Show me this distinction in either.  The St Paul statute could be used
to ban menorahs in windows, signs supporting gay or abortion rights,
or signs supporting desegregation.

>>Your support of penalties for speech endanger the very groups you seek to
>>protect.  You're a white male (as you've stated before); this isn't going
>>to hurt you when it happens.  I'm a minority that's been squashed before
>>by governments extending their powers as you wish them to.  The ordinance
>>that bans swastikas today as offensive to Jews will eventually lead to
>>the ordinance tomorrow that bans Jews as offensive to Christians.
>
>You don't know what you're talking about.  I'd bet that most Holocaust
>survivors would have welcomed an anti-hate-speech law in Germany in
>1933.  

You're just intent on invoking Godwin's Law, aren't you?

Ed, you're forgetting that it was the German government that would have
(and did) define hate speech.  Once the government had the power to
prohibit some speech, it used that power to oppress the most marginalized.

I'm sure they much rather would have preferred the constitutional protections
that we have in this country that would forbid laws targeting marginalized
groups.  It's just a shame that some misguided folks are so short-sighted
as to want to throw away these protections for the brief glory of getting
rid of speech that *they* don't like, without realizing that once those
protections are gone, it's going to be the Jews, blacks, and feminists who
are victims, not the Viktoras and Pat Buchanans.
-- 
           .. . . .  .  .   .    .     .     .    .   .  .  . . . ..
          ted frank | thf2@midway.uchicago.edu | standard disclaimers
         the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,alt.politics.elections,uiuc.civil-liberty,alt.sex,rec.arts.fine