censorship

Obama Administration Undermines Free Speech and Due Process in Crusade Against Harassment and Bullying

by Hans Bader on March 22, 2011

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

The Obama administration’s recent push against “bullying” resulted in a letter to school officials that undermines both free speech and due process. On October 26, a political appointee in the Education Department sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to the nation’s school boards claiming that many forms of homophobia and bullying violate federal laws against sexual harassment and discrimination. But those laws only ban discrimination based on sex or race — not bullying in general. The letter from the Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights Russlynn Ali defined “harassment” so broadly as to reach both speech protected by the First Amendment, and conduct the Supreme Court says does not legally qualify as harassment.

The letter left the incorrect impression with some reporters that federal statutes already ban bullying and sexual-orientation-based harassment. For example, Keen News Service reported that the Education Department “issued guidance to all school officials in October 2010, reminding them that federal law requires schools to take action against bullying,” including “sexual harassment of LGBT students.” The letter was part of the Obamas’ PR campaign against bullying, that featured a “a high-visibility conference on bullying prevention March 10, with the President and first lady” and the introduction by Obama backers of “several LGBT-inclusive bills designed to address bullying of students.”

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CEI Podcast — November 15, 2010: Free Speech and Video Games

by Ryan Young on November 15, 2010

in Culture, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Podcast, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia gives his take on a Supreme Court case concerning California’s ban of violent video game sales to minors. Keeping such things away from children is traditionally a job for parents. Have a listen here.

The case has implications that reach far beyond video games. Because censorship is such a subjective thing, allowing it could have a chilling effect on forms of expression from art to music to film. The First Amendment specifically prohibits the government from sanitizing culture. That is up to the people themselves.

Photo credit: bhschenker’s flickr photostream.

Culture Warriors Are Missing the Point

by Nicole Ciandella on June 21, 2010

in Culture

Viacom took a heavy-handed beating last week in The Washington Times. Robert Knight, senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union, slammed the cable giant in the top op-ed of Friday’s Commentary section.

“All the major networks are awash in sex, profanity, violence and attacks on religion,” Knight writes. “But for sheer creepiness, Viacom wins, hands down.”

His reasons? Viacom’s Nickelodeon has a website which links to AddictingGames.com, which is BAD. Also, Viacom—or “Vilecom,” as Knight calls it—runs the “homosexual” LOGO network and Comedy Central, “which puts profanities in fourth-graders’ mouths in South Park” and which is currently developing a “blasphemous cartoon series” about Jesus Christ. MTV, also owned by Viacom, has just premiered a series about a geeky high-schooler with “abnormally-large genitalia.” This isn’t just trash, Knight explains; this is trash “aimed right at kids.”

“If someone came into your home and showed your child this stuff, under his raincoat, you’d have him arrested—at the least.” Knight fumes. “But Nickelodeon and MTV hum right along, fueled by ads from Disney, Hamburger Helper and other amoral advertisers.”

Knight is hardly the only vocal critic of Viacom. He joins legions of radical Muslims who condemned Viacom for South Park’s depiction of the prophet Mohammed.

The great defense attorney Clarence Darrow once said in a closing argument, “I am always suspicious of righteous indignation. Nothing is more cruel than righteous indignation.”

If there is a culture war being waged right now, it is not between the “moral” and the “immoral”; it is between those who would enforce their morality on others and those who believe in a free marketplace of ideas.

As America is terrorized by those here and abroad who wish to limit our freedom of expression, it is disappointing that those who claim to be patriots are attacking that which separates us from our enemies.

You do not have a right to not be offended.

by Michelle Minton on May 13, 2010

in Odds & Ends

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
—Salman Rushdie

Today it was announced that the ACLU has filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania as a result of their investigation of the nearly 800 citations doled out by police officers in the last year for disorderly conduct.  The ACLU claims that many of the citations involve cursing and other behavior that is not obscene and therefore protected by the first amendment.  According to the ACLU the major problem is that officers are not properly trained to understand the difference between the vernacular term obscenity and the legal definition of obscene speech not protected under the 1st amendment. The real problem isn’t, as ACLU lawyer  Marieke Tuthill put it, that officers aren’t trained to understand the “difference between the colloquial definition of obscenity and the legal definition.”

The real problem isn’t that obscenity isn’t defined, the problem is that obscenity–not matter how it is defined remains unprotected.  Either speech is an inviolable right or it isn’t. To say that sometimes speech is a right and sometimes not is to say that it isn’t a right at all.  The result of this lack of absolute protection of speech allows government agents to silence average citizens under the guise of curtailing obscenity. It also allows federal agents to put pressure on citizens who have the misfortune of falling under it’s purview. One such person, John Stagliano, has had the misfortune to learn first hand about the limits of the first amendment.

The right to offend: Under current judicial interpretation, obscene speech that would not be protected under the first amendment is determined if  “it would be found desirable to the prurient interest by an average person applying contemporary community standards, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” This is called the “Miller test“.

We’ve all heard it a million times, but it warrants repeating: The first amendment declares:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

And according to the incorporation doctrine, this amendment along with several others also applies to state and local governments. So, no government body can make rules that would abridge (that is lessen, diminish, or curtail) free expression.

delacroixxxWhat’s a community–how is it determined? Who determines what art is? What offends? How many people have to deem something offensive for it to become a “community standard”? In other words, how many people does it take to strip a minority group of people of their right to free expression?

The purpose of the first amendment is to allow people to freely express their ideas without coercion from the government to prevent tyranny. If we allow “offense to community standards” to be an adequate justification for the violation of a citizen’s right to free speech we are simply allowing the community to become that tyrannical state.

“The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.” ~Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

LibertyWeek 77: The Future of the Senate

by Richard Morrison on January 19, 2010

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Richard Morrison, Jeremy Lott and the American Spectator’s Joseph Lawler assemble to bring you Episode 77 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We explore the Massachusetts Senate race, Google vs. China on web censorship, the debate over global warming in Detroit, the cost of doing business in Venezuela and the inspiring philanthropic response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti.

An unhappy ending for CA’s adult film industry?

by Michelle Minton on December 18, 2009 · 1 comment

in Labor, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

One reason people enjoy pornography (apart from the obvious benefit) is that it allows them to fantasize about activities in which they cannot or do not engage in their real sexual lives. One of those fantasies is sex sans protection: adult films almost exclusively feature actors having unprotected sex–something the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) wants to put a stop to for California adult film studios. The organization today will file a petition at the meeting of California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board asking them to include a condom requirement in their rules applying to adult film workers.

Will this improve the rate of STD infection among adult film actors? For those who stay in CA and can find work, sure it probably will. But banning all porn would be even more effective, but it doesn’t mean we should do it.  Before adopting even more regulations for the industry I’d like to point out a few facts:

This is a form of censorship. Whether or not one considers pornography “art” it is a form of communication that the government should not be able to alter or censor in any way.

Allowing the government to regulate sexual activity among consenting adults, even if it is “acting” sets a very dangerous precedent. After all, what constitutes porn or a working environment? What if the “actors” are a husband and wife team with a home movie recorder or woman with a bedroom camera and her own pay-per-view website?  The government does not belong in our bedrooms, boardrooms, or studios.

Production companies could very easily leave California for nearby Nevada or other states with friendly regulations and taxation. Perhaps Delaware will be the new adult film capital of the world. Beyond the fact that it isn’t the place of government to legislate how private companies conduct their business, these regulations could drive away millions of dollars in tax revenue and jobs.

Of course porn actors have increased incidents of STDs. They have sex for a living! Expressing outrage over that fact is like being surprised that logger are more likely to lose limbs or postal workers are more likely to get paper cuts than the general public. The possibility of STDs goes along with the territory–it’s an occupational hazard, but one that actors and studios can and do mitigate against by upholding their own standards of testing and safety. It is telling that the AHF petition notes that multiple cases of STD transmission in the adult film industry occurs in the same people.

AHF claims that not forcing actors to wear condoms creates an unsafe working environment in violation of OSHA regulations. I was unable to obtain the list submitted by AHF of adult films they submitted as proof that CA’s porn industry creates an unsafe work environment for the actors…but I’m willing to bet that the these films violate a whole bevy of other OSHA regulations.

Trying to mandate how x-rated films are made is silly and won’t work, it will simply drive the studios to move out of the state.

LibertyWeek 54: Read My Lips

by Richard Morrison on August 3, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Your host Richard Morrison welcomes back returning guest co-hosts Michelle Minton and Jeremy Lott for Episode 54 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with ominous hints of new taxes, California state employees making strike threats and the possible antitrust implications of the Microhoo partnership. We continue with a double-dipping pay scandal, the suppression of dissent in Venezuela and some fully transparent Olympic News.

Policy Translated: Technology Regulation

by Richard Morrison on August 3, 2009 · 1 comment

in Video, Zeitgeist

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz0N-zegHU8 285 234]

LibertyWeek 46: The Great Porn Wall of China

by Richard Morrison on June 9, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Your faithful host Richard Morrison welcomes back special guest co-hosts William Yeatman and Michelle Minton for Episode 46 (listen HERE!). We start with the investors that are getting worked over by the politically-distorted bankruptcy of Chrysler, the ascension of the Swedish Pirate Party to the European Parliament and the Great Porn Wall of China. We then move on to proof that beer is better for you than water, a sign that airline travel may get more expensive, and an example of how voters deal with corrupt politicians. Finally, we wind things up with some very educational Olympic News.

Profiles in Hypocrisy: Gov. Arnold Pushes Violent Game Ban

by Elizabeth Jacobson on May 24, 2009 · 2 comments

in Culture, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Tech & Telecom

California legislators, along with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are still trying to ban the sale of violent video games to minors. Now, they’re taking their fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Similar state bans on violent games have been deemed unconstitutional by the courts again and again and again (and again). But knowing that the law is in blatant violation of the First Amendment hasn’t stopped the “Governator” (who, ironically, has starred in more than a few violent movies over the last couple decades) from trying to impose his parenting advice on the public. From his statement:

By prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children under the age of 18 and requiring these games to be clearly labeled, this law would allow parents to make better informed decisions for their kids.

Prohibiting the sale of a product to children does absolutely nothing to “inform” parents about the merits of the product, nor does it “allow” parents to make better decisions. Rather, it takes the decision completely out of parents’ hands. Can’t you just imagine the Orwellian slogan in Sacramento: PROHIBITION=EMPOWERMENT.

This is just another attempt for the state to assume the role of the parent by politicians who think real parents are too stupid to raise their kids. But hey, it’s not like Californian lawmakers have anything else to worry about these days. Right?

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