Bill Whatcott may be an asshole, but judges say that he has every right to be an asshole. After distributing various pamphlets in the cities of Saskatoon and Regina with titles like “Sodomites in Our Public Schools,” the Canadian man was saddled with a $17,500 fine for what a lower court deemed “hate speech.” This week the Saskatchewan Court of Appeals overturned the decision on the grounds that Whatcott criticized homosexual behavior, not homosexuals as people.

This isn’t the first time Whatcott has made the news. He previously had his nursing license suspended for engaging in anti-abortion protests outside of work. After an appeal to the Canadian Supreme Court, Whatcott had his license restored.

This dude is quite the character. The only writing of his I could find online, while fervent, is coherent and level-headed. (It’s here, but WARNING – GRAPHIC photo of a beheaded teen girl from Indonesia at the top.) After reading his history on Wikipedia, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. Given that he aims to make homosexuality immoral, my sympathy only extends so far – but it’s limited by knowing that he escaped Canada’s foster system, and turned away from a life of drugs and prostitution. I’m sure Whatcott is convinced that Christianity saved him from a short, brutal life of degradation and drug abuse. He’s probably right. But a quick perusal of his Flickr page – a melange of naked men at gay pride parades, oddly-titled head shots that hint at personal vendettas, and graphic photographs of obliterated soldiers in Iraq – hints that all’s not well in Wonderland. This man’s demons haven’t been exorcised: they’ve merely found a new release valve.

Be that as it may, Whatcott has the basic human right to work out his neurosis in public. As for the law, the Court of Appeals did not strike down the portion of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code under which Whatcott was originally found guilty. In a section entitled “Prohibition against publications,” the Code states:

14(1) No person shall publish or display, or cause or permit to be published or displayed, on any lands or premises or in a newspaper, through a television or radio broadcasting station or any other broadcasting device, or in any printed matter or publication or by means of any other medium that the person owns, controls, distributes or sells, any representation, including any notice, sign, symbol, emblem,
article, statement or other representation:

(a) tending or likely to tend to deprive, abridge or otherwise restrict the enjoyment by any person or class of persons, on the basis of a prohibited ground, of any right to which that person or class of persons is entitled under law; or

(b) that exposes or tends to expose to hatred, ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person or class of persons on the basis of a prohibited ground.

(2) Nothing in subsection (1) restricts the right to freedom of expression under the
law upon any subject.

The “Prohibited Grounds” encompass religion, creed, marital status, family status, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, colour, ancestry, nationality, place of origin, race or perceived race, and receipt of public assistance. That’s a broad class of speech, and the vagueness of the law (“tends to expose”?) practically invites abuse.

I can see an argument for banning speech that directly invites harm to a class of people – e.g., “Shoot the homos,” or “Let’s round up and burn the Jews.” That falls under the “inciting to violence” exception to free expression. And I’m down with meting out harsher penalties for hate crimes. But banning speech that merely creates an “atmosphere” of intolerance contradicts the guarantees that the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code makes regarding speech. It’s also counter-productive, in that it allows disturbed men like Whatcott to play the martyr. Better that his half-baked ideas are exposed, ridiculed, and tossed on the trash heap of history, rather than redacted with the censor’s pen.

Uncategorized bill whatcott, censorship, free speech, gay, glbt, saskatchewan

Awwww, isn’t that sweet? Not content to express his hate for America’s First Black President™ in prose, skinhead Johnny Logan Spencer Jr. wrote Barack Obama a hate poem called “The Sniper.” According to the First Amendment Center, the poem included these lovely, lyrical lines:

The bullet that he has chambered is one of the purest pride,
And the inspiration on the casing reads DIE negro DIE

If you can stomach it, you can search for “pain1488″ (Spencer’s online handle) and these lines, and find a full copy of the poem. I won’t link directly, as the only copies I could find are on white supremacist sites, and, well, fuck them. But you’ve got the gist. Spencer isn’t making a direct threat against the President, but describing a fictional assassin. Whether Spencer is the kind of white racist asshole who would turn verse into reality ought to be a separate question. But federal prosecutors believe the poem is a “true threat” exception to the First Amendment, and are arguing that Spencer should stand trial for violating 18 USC Sect. 871, which prohibits direct threats against the President and Vice President.

But this isn’t a direct threat. It’s obscene and vile, but so are many things covered by the First Amendment (*cough*MichaelAndDebiPearl*cough*). What’s the difference between this poem and Death of a President, a fictional movie about the assassination of George W. Bush? I’m with Jonathan Turley: absent additional evidence of malice or planning, Spencer should walk.

Uncategorized barack obama, first amendment, free speech, johnny logan spencer, politics, us president

[UPDATE: Wordpress.com gave Hawkins his blog back. Good job, guys.]

Andreas Moritz has an intriguing theory about cancer: it’s your fault. If you have cancer, it’s because of your “poor self-image, unresolved conflicts and worries or past emotional trauma.”

Oh, wait. That’s not intriguing – it’s offensive and moronic. Forgive me, I often confuse the two.

Now, it’s not just offensive – it’s also a free speech issue. After blogger Michael Hawkins put up a post called “Andreas Moritz is a Stupid, Dangerous Man,” Moritz lobbied Wordpress.com to have Hawkins’ blog shut down. Wordpress.com complied, though it’s unclear whether it did so in reaction to Hawkins or from the complaint of Christopher Maloney, who demanded that Wordpress.com give Hawkins a warning after Hawkins said that naturopath Mahoney isn’t a doctor. Apparently, Maine licenses naturopaths, making Hawkins’ statement factually incorrect in a single state.

At any rate, if you go to Hawkins’ blog “For The Sake of Science,” you’ll find there’s nothing to see there – and Andreas Moritz is taking credit. We know this because he had the brass balls to write Hawkins a gloating email. Money quote:

My close friend, Dr Deepak Chopra, who in addition to Dr Makoney and myself have been viciously attacked by your friend, the fish zoologist, PZ Myers, are considering a lawsuit against him. Slander is slander, whether it is done online or offline. If your friend is wise, he will immediately remove those blogs from his site.

Mind you, this hasn’t stopped Hawkins from continuing to blog on Wordpress.com on his secondary blog, where the original post about Moritz still exists. Hawkins has, however, set many of his posts about Christopher Maloney to private, so that he isn’t shut down a second time. Wordpress.com has failed to respond to any of his emails about why they thought it necessary to restrict his freedom of speech.

Andreas Moritz isn’t a doctor. He’s trained in Ayurvedic medicine and any of another number of “alternative” health theories. Which, more power to him. It’s his right to convince people that he knows what he’s doing, and that he can bring them some measure of peace and comfort. He even has the right to tell medical doctors with decades of training and experience that they’re full of shit in recommending chemotherapy to their patients. And everybody else has the right to proclaim that this makes him a dangerous man who’s putting the lives of the people we love at risk.

My ex-wife had a brush with cancer recently – a pancreatic tumor that turned out, thank the Goddess, to be a benign product of a virulent CMV bloodstream infection. Her docs, culled from the best cancer specialists in Seattle, bisected the tumor and reconstructed her pancreas. Had the tumor been malignant, she would have undergone chemo. Gone untreated, this condition would have killed her. I shudder to think what her fate might have been had she put herself in the hands of an Andreas Moritz, whose ideas are so weak and feeble that he resorts to litigation to silence his critics.

But enough of Moritz. The larger shame here goes to Wordpress.com for silencing Hawkins in the first place. Its silence is revolting. If you’re a blogger doing anything remotely controversial, you’d be better off hosting Wordpress on a site like Dreamhost. If someone challenges you on your Wordpress.com content, make sure you have your files backed up, because the company will not have your back.

Uncategorized andreas moritz, cancer, first amendment, free speech, michael hawkins, pharyngula, wordpress, wordpress.com

Where does free speech end, and being a hateful asshole begin? Obviously, no speech is truly “free” when you’re using someone else’s computers to host it. Free speech doesn’t mean you have a right to put your soapbox on my lawn. Social media networks like Facebook are private companies, and have great latitude in deciding what constitutes inappropriate content. Having latitude sometimes means you make stupid decisions – e.g., banning photos of breastfeeding, while allowing a group that advocates rape to fester.

(FB has since backed off its breast persecution. It’s okay, guys – it takes a while to learn that YOU DON”T PISS OFF MOMS ON THE INTERNET because they will FUCK YOU UP.)

Facebook’s latest free speech stress test comes in the form of Joseph Andrew Stack, the deeply disturbed dude who ran a plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas. Since yesterday morning I’ve watched Joseph Andrew Stack groups pop up and disappear. I assume FB’s content police are deleting them as quickly as they sprout up. The only one that’s managed to survive is labeled simply “Joseph Andrew Stack.” In the true style of batshit crazy radical politics, the page doesn’t even link to Stack’s long, angry rant against the US government and corporate America, but to the Web site for convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. It’s the right-wing version of a hippie-liberal half-naked protest parade.

But just yesterday, the group was entitled “Joseph Andrew Stack, we salute thee.” Indeed, that’s how it still shows up in my browser address bar. If it had kept that banner, you can be certain the Facebook censors would have disappeared it by now. And I’m fine with that. You won’t hear me defending people who want to memorialize a cold-blooded killer.

As for Stack himself, I alternate between sympathy and outrage. He was clearly ill, and it pisses me off he couldn’t contain his radius of destruction. What Stack will never have is my adulation. How anyone who purports to love America can be nonchalant about a terrorist who used the exact same methods as the perpetrators of 9/11 mystifies me.

Stack is no Osama bin Laden; all reports are that he was more disturbed than deranged. But I doubt the families of the dead care about such fine distinctions. Stack’s final act in life should doom his name to ignominy all the same.

If some wackadoodles want to build a digital mausoleum to this man, let them find some hole on the Internet. It’s a big, wired world. Facebook faces (HA!) an almost impossible task in maintaining both openness and civility on a network of over 400 million users. In that context, banning pro-rape groups and fan clubs for murderers seems like a no-brainer.

Uncategorized facebook, first amendment, free speech, joseph andrew stack

The Internet managed to save Anne Frank’s lesbian vagina. Can it save Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants? A mom in the Fond du Lac School District in Wisconsin has requested that six books be removed from the shelves of the middle school attended by her offspring. This, even though the school system already has a process allowing parents to place check-out restrictions on any book in the system. Not good enough for Ann Wentworth, who finds these seven tomes so offensive that she doesn’t want anyone else’s kids reading them, either.

The proposed blacklist consists of:

One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies by Sonya Sones
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares (Jesus, lady! Did Brashares back over your firstborn or something?)
Get Well Soon by Julie Halpern
What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones

Lordy. At the rate Wentworth is going, by 2025 the only books in the middle school library will be Fun with Dick and Jane and three copies of Going Rogue.

I guess I ought not to be surprised. While universally acclaimed and targeted specifically for readers from grade 6 on up, What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones was the Most Challenged Book of both 2004 and 2005, according to the American Library Association.

The district is considering each of her requests one by one, via public hearing. I haven’t read any of these books, and don’t know Wentworth’s objections to them. But does it matter? Let parents decide for themselves, and use the system that’s already and place. Who died and made Ann Wentworth the boss of everyone else’s children?

Uncategorized ann brashares, anne frank, books, censorship, free speech, sonya sones, wisconsin

And Today’s Lesson in Job Security is: never use social media to crap on your students. Melissa Hussain, an eighth grade teacher at West Lake Middle School in Apex, North Carolina, was pissed when a student or students left a Bible on her desk. Instead of keeping her outrage to herself, she took it to Facebook, labeling the act a “hate crime” (insert eyeroll here). In the comments, her friends lamented that she was beset with a classroom of “ignorant Southern rednecks.”

Hussain’s been suspended with pay, and could lose her job in the subsequent review.

Why did students feel compelled the leave the Bible in the first place? Was Hussain sharing her own religious opinions in class? Recounting the weekend she spent dancing naked ’round the Lammas fire in celebration of the Divine Feminine? Praising a student for wearing his Nietzsche tee to class? Apparently none of the above. From what P.Z. Myers could discover, the students were engaged in a campaign of religious harassment against Hussain, leaving Jesus postcards on her desk and reading from the Bible when they were supposed to be doing classwork.

Good one, parents – teaching your kids to undermine their authority figures. Heckuva job you’re doing there. Silly fundamentalist Christians – classrooms are for learning, not converting.

On the other hand, Myers – whose militant atheism often compels him to hysterics – accuses the school of suspending Hussain for a “Thought Crime.” That’s ludicrous. This was a classroom discipline issue, not a “hate crime,” as Miss Hussain so feverishly described it. Teach had no business airing her issues with the classroom on the Internet. That’s unprofessional. She should have raised it with the administration, or even the ACLU – not her Facebook friends list. Now she’s given the school a reasonable pretext to fire her ass. Badly played, ma’am.

Uncategorized christianity, first amendment, free speech, north carolina, pharyngula, religion, school, teachers

Oh, Australia. Beautiful, backwards Australia. The country that’s currently implementing a giant firewall to screen out the naughtiest bits of the Internet (including small-breasted ladies) also has a restriction on adult-themed video games. The games are denied a rating, which in Australia means they’re banned. The government is considering a proposal to remedy this idiocy, but it’s facing opposition from South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, who says (get ready) that he fears video gamers more than outlaw motorcycle gangs:

“I feel that my family and I are more at risk from gamers than we are from the outlaw motorcycle gangs who also hate me,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation late Monday.

“The outlaw motorcycle gangs haven’t been hanging around my doorstep at 2:00 am, a gamer has.”

Dude. That’s not a gamer. A true gamer would’ve threatened you via text messaging.

Atkinson has also been cracking down on motorcycle gangs. Honestly, if I were a member of a motorcycle gang, and I heard that the AG was quaking in his boots over a gamer, I’d sleep easier that night.

Uncategorized australia, censorship, free speech, video games

Here’s a novel idea: an offshore haven for digital free speech that protects whistleblowers, investigative journalists, and anyone persecuted by their home nation for speaking truth to power. That’s what Iceland is angling to become with a new measure that will eventually create the strongest press protections anywhere in the world.

The current measure isn’t a law, but a legislative initiative that would craft the necessary laws required to make Iceland the journalist’s Delaware. It sports the sex-upped name “The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative.” That’s the English name, natch; I’m sure the Icelandic name is harder to pronounce than “Björk Guðmundsdóttir.” The  measure aims to incorporate the journalistic protections of Belgium, the journalist source protection laws of Sweden, and the United States’ vaunted First Amendment into Icelandic law. It would also agitate to prevent the filing of libel lawsuits for cases outside of Iceland – so-called “libel tourism.” Daniel Schmitt of Wikileaks christened the idea “a Switzerland of bits.”

Why is this happening in Iceland? Jonathan Stray says the country’s mood shifted when Icelandic banks moved to prevent the national press from publishing the nation’s list of creditors. (Iceland is currently weighted down by a debt equal to five times its Gross Domestic Product. How’d you like to stare down THAT credit card statement?) The press circumvented the restriction by broadcasting a URL to Wikileaks, where Icelanders could view the list themselves.

Apparently, the people of Iceland don’t appreciate having their press muzzled by powerful corporate interests. What a funny people. Don’t they know they’re endangering the nation’s supply of cheap Chinese toasters?!

This may be the greatest thing to come out of Iceland since The Great Crossover Potential. And I mean that will all my heart. Given that Australia and France are both kicking free speech in the teeth, it’s heartening to see that at least one major Western democracy gets it.

(h/t to Rachael for the title)

Uncategorized bjork, first amendment, free speech, iceland, the sugarcubes, wikileaks

Ah, another case of questionable suppression of speech in my backyard. Last time, the offenders were to the east of Seattle, in nearby Kirkland. This time, they’re to my north in the quaint town of Arlington, where the Arlington High School yearbook adviser decided that Justin Surber’s “GOD IS DEAD” t-shirt was too hot to handle. Irony of ironies, Surber is the captain of the debate club – i.e., a group you’d expect to be argumentative. Debate is fine, apparently – so long as it doesn’t appear in the yearbook. A staffer asked Surber and his club to stand for their picture a second time, but Surber refused to have his photo taken without the tee. The debate club’s photo will appear in the yearbook sans its fearless leader.

Surber’s argument is that he’s worn the t-shirt to school once every week, and that if it’s not disruptive in the classroom, it’s not disruptive on a glossy dead tree. But Principal Kurt Criscione defended the adviser’s actions, saying that other members of the debate club may not have wanted to “associate” themselves with Surber’s regurgitation of Friedrich Nietzsche.  Which raises three questions:

(1) Did anyone ask them? and;

(2) if the t-shirt in question were sporting Bible chapter and verse, would we even be having this discussion? and, finally;

(3) Does anyone hate spelling “Nietzsche” as much as I do? I loathe it. I work the bastard out of blog posts just so I don’t have to spell it.

Surber loses points for forcing me to write “Nietzsche,” but gets kudos for fighting the good fight. (Study some more philosophers in college, kid. Sartre, Heidegger, Kant, Hume, Quine, Carnap, Spinoza, Nagel – there are wider horizons than He Who Shall Not Be Spelled.) Given that atheists are one of the last surviving despisable minorities in the United States, I’ll bet this incident is swept under the rug. Not to fear, though: Surber carries a 3.85 GPA, and wants to enter politics after college. I doubt we’ve heard the last of him.

Uncategorized atheism, christianity, first amendment, free speech, justin surber, religion

Censorship is the disturbing hot new trend of 2010. I noted a few days ago that the Land Down Under is about to establish the Great Firewall of Australia. Duncan Riley argued that Oz’s example could influence other Western democracies to follow suit. Duncan was unfortunately prescient. Word today is that France may follow suit and create its own national firewall to filter out all “objectionable” content.

In Orwellian fashion, French lawmakers are attempting to attach the censorship provisions to a “domestic security” bill. And, once again, the reason given for this draconion system is the bugaboo of child pornography. As nation after nation have shown, however, these systems are used to censor a wide variety of speech once they become entrenched. French author Fabrice Epelboin, an expert in the underworld of child pornography, argues that its purveyors are using encrypted peer-to-peer networks to disseminate their filth, not ordinary Web traffic. Translation? Censoring casual Net traffic won’t do a damned thing to curtail child porn. The bill is a Trojan wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Opponents have been unsuccessful in attaching common-sense provisions to the firewall that would limit abuses, such as mandating an independent judicial review of the ban list every 30 days. Like the Australian system, the proposed French system would not be subject to any public scrutiny. Even worse? French President/Hounddog-in-Chief Nicolas Sarkozy told French music companies last month that the filtering system could be used to defeat piracy. Want to take bets on how much legitimate content will be banned under that wide net? Say goodbye to YouTube, citizens of France.

Whenever liberals want to argue against an injustice in America – from the death penalty to our lack of universal health care  – we point out that most of the civilized world has already followed suit. If this trend continues, we could be the ones arguing why the US should be the only Western democracy without a Net nanny.

Uncategorized australia, censorship, france, free speech, nicolas sarkozy