From: ultrarishi <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2015 7:34 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: The Religious Mind It is strange that this follows in the wake of the ridiculous "The Interview" nonsense. We are puffing up and feeling proud of ourselves as a nation that the chickenshits at Sony Entertainment finally released this crap and thus struck a blow for the first amendment. This is a good thing. It's a shame that all this was for such a lousy film (yep, I got the download from amazon). And I went through this 20+ years ago in San Francisco when protesters were going to the opening night of "The Last Temptation of Christ" at the Northpoint Theatre. I didn't really have much interest in the film, but I will fight censorship in this country at every turn. The closing of the film "The People vs. Larry Flynt" made the point the offensive speech wether it be cartoons of the Prophet or so called pornography or bathroom humor needs to be protected. The Supreme Court opinion (quoting Wikipedia article) "At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentaly imposed sanctions."
Well said. I also pass along some words written by a friend of mine on this subject. She is a human rights lawyer. I think that the points she makes in her last paragraph are very relevant, and the perfect refutation of the silly things feste has been saying: Will you prohibit some speech because it is offensive? The key issue is who gets to judge offensiveness, because everything is offensive to someone. Will you prohibit speech only if it offends well-armed nutters? You’ve just made bullying worthwhile, as well-armed nutters can determine the boundaries of public discourse. Will you prohibit some offensive speech because it is trivial? Again, the key issue is who gets to judge, because things that are trivial to some are vitally important to others. I think political speech that offends people should be denounced and mocked by the people who find it offensive. Obviously I can’t make well-armed nutters agree with me. If well-armed nutters shoot people it’s because they decided to, not because somebody drew a cartoon. People who get off on shooting people will always find something to be mad about. Deciding that drawing a cartoon was a proximate cause of the shooting amounts to criticising the act of drawing a cartoon in the same way that deciding that wearing a short skirt and drinking too much was a proximate cause of rape is criticising wearing short skirts and drinking alcohol, two activities that are harmless unless pursued in the presence of a rapist. It’s victim-blaming and wrongly attributes causation.
