From: sethb@fid.morgan.com (Seth Breidbart)
Subject: Re: Minneapolis Hate Speech Ordinance 
Organization: my opinions only
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 23:28:14 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:

>  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.

Putting an abusive sign on your property may offend me, but it doesn't
harm me.

>  I retract errors only when *I*
>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.

That's right.  Most of us refuse to retract errors when *you* feel
that we are in the wrong.

>Futhermore, if I were to engage in more frequent retractions, either of
>necessity
...

>So
>I shall go on posting the truth as I see it,

Even after you're proven wrong.

> 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, 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
>lawn create this belief in Jewish passersby;

No they don't, unless there's a person wearing Nazi regalia and
holding weapons alonside them.  Even then, only maybe.

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

The most pornographic displays that I've seen in public have been put
there by women opposing pornography.  Hustler conceals its centerfold
inside a folded magazine; Women Against Pornography paste it on a
poster which they show in the middle of Grand Central Station.  (It may
actually have been a different anti-pornography group that did that,
but I saw the poster, and was asked to sign a petition against
pornography by the people displaying it.)

>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?

Yes.

>  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.

If he punches you, he's committing a crime.  If he sues you, he should
lose (and his attorney should be punished under Rule 11, for bringing
a frivolous suit).

>  Now you tell me how this is different from giving
>Posner's grandma a heart attack because she was in Theriesenstadt in
>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.
>You tell me how this is different from giving my secretary a nervous
>breakdown by putting pornographic magazines on her desk. 

The first two are rude and obnoxious but not illegal.  The third may
be actionable, depending on the circumstances (e.g. if you're trying
to offend her, it's probably actionable; if you're a lawyer and the
magazines are potential evidence in a case you want her to file, it's
not actionable).

>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.  

Once again, you're making things up.  This isn't assault when
performed against a powerful male or anybody else.  You're the only
one who claims it is.

>>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.

No, it's a statement of opinion.  Unless you can write such a law,
we're going to have to agree with Ted.

>  And your statement that there are more
>people offended by Our Bodies, Our Selves than Hustler is absolutely
>heart-breaking.

And possibly true.

>  It's untrue,

Did you count?  Or can you now read minds wholesale?

> but it shows (in its utter fantasy) that
>YOU are more offended by OBOS than Hustler.

More telepathy?  I'd bet you're wrong.

>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.

MacKinnon has gotten lots of laws passed.  I can't even get a
legislator to listen to me.  Who is disempowered?

>>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.  

Such a law would have been used against Jews and not against Nazis.

Seth		sethb@fid.morgan.com