From: cmort@NCoast.ORG (Christopher Morton)
Subject: Re: Minneapolis Hate Speech Ordinance 
Reply-To: cmort@ncoast.org (Christopher Morton)
Organization: North Coast Public Access *NIX, Cleveland, OH
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 17:36:13 GMT
Followup-To: alt.censorship

As quoted from <1992Sep28.194124.26838@Princeton.EDU> by egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges):

> In article <1992Sep28.170613.22678@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
> >Followups narrowing the distribution.
> >
> >
> >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

...unless you just decided to continue to lie.

> feel I was in the wrong, and I do so promptly.  Which is more than I can
> say for most of the clowns on this net.

You ARE most of the clowns on this net.

> I shall go on posting the truth as I see it, which is that "hate speech"
> laws don't pose a threat to free speech, the conduct that they proscribe
> poses a threat to free speech.

No, you will continue to lie, since you cannot make your case otherwise.
Indeed you do not HAVE a case otherwise.

> >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.  Nazi displays on one's

Gee, did we forget a couple of things, like REASONABLE and IMMINENT?  Nah,
you left them out on purpose.

> this belief in the minds of blacks; pornographic displays create this
> belief in the minds of women passersby. 

REALLY?  "HARMED"?  HOW?  Apparently the presentation of an opposing social
view is "HARMFUL".  I sure know that the Nazis thought so.  I think they 
called it "degenerate art".  You're in good company.

> 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.  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.

You don't mean "literally", you mean MINDLESSLY.  Tell me, if the president of
Johnson Communications reads an RCP tract calling for the destruction of the
capitalist system, and expropriation of owners, and he fears for his continued
existence, has an assault been committed?  Should the RCP be censored?

> >>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?  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.  Now you tell me how this is different from giving

Well, there's definitely proof that you can't find the law any better than you
can find your ass with both hands.  It IS speech.  And furthermore, if he's
as stupid as you are and punches you, THAT'S assault AND battery.  Don't quit
your day job to become a lawyer Nihilges.  He COULD sue you, but it'd be 
frivolous, unless you made a THREAT.  Of course you wish to legislate 
conscience, so perhaps to YOU it IS a threat not to obsequiously fawn over
someone.

> 1940 and I march through her neighborhood in Nazi regalia.  You tell me
> how this is different from giving a black guy's grandma a heart attack
> by dressing up like the lynch mob that killed her first husband in 1936.

It's not different.  It's the same.  That's why they're both LEGAL.  Whether
or not there's a tort action possible is a different issue, but since you can
sue ANYBODY for nearly ANYTHING, who knows.  But INTELLIGENT people know that
suing and WINNING are not synonymous.

> You tell me how this is different from giving my secretary a nervous
> breakdown by putting pornographic magazines on her desk. 

No, that's sexual harrassment.  On the other hand you may put those magazines
on your OWN desk at home.  You and your fascist compadres want to prohibit THAT
too.

> You're restricting assault to the attack on powerful MALES by anyone
> else by saying that what would be construed as assault on a powerful
> MALE is "free speech" when it victimizes the powerless.  

No, EVERYONE else is refusing to allow you to define assault and dozen other
legal terms on the fly to suit the needs of what is patently an assinine and
brainless "argument".

> >
> >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.  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.

To YOU, EVERYTHING which denies you absolute control over others is a threat.
You don't know that his claim is untrue, but then truth is a nullity to you
anyway.  I'd rather see people have the freedom to read Hustler AND OBOS, but
then I'm not SO afraid of differing opinions that I try to use the force of law
to stamp them all out with a jackboot.

> A distinction CAN be drawn.  The distinction WAS drawn in the St Paul
> statute, and in the MacKinnon antiporn statutes.  But because this
> distinction was drawn by the relatively disempowered, it was ignored and
> said to be unconstitutional.

NO distinction was drawn.  That "distinction" is one of your [many] fab-
rications.

> David Noble, a historian of technology, tells a story.  Lee Iacocca gets

You tell ENOUGH stories.

> Feminists who draft these statutes are in the same boat. They draw a
> clear distinction between Hustler and Our Bodies, Our Selves, a
> distinction which can be understood by anyone.  But because they bear

There IS no "clear line".  Of course you don't WANT a clear line.  It might
require you to NOT suppress something you don't like.  Equal treatment is a
concept inimical to the sort of dictatorship you want.

> >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.  

He knows far better than a privileged White male such as you could EVER know.
You have the luxury of stupidity and historical illiteracy.  Others of us don't
have that luxury.


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