I rarely have much useful to say about politics, but I would like to offer a simple analogy to perhaps shed a different shade of light on the First Amendment flame war that seems to be smoldering here.
If I were to walk into a public library with a group of friends and we were to begin singing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" at the top of our lungs, at the very least, we would be urged to express ourselves in a less voluminous manner. At the most, we could be forcibly removed from the premises and banned from future entry. Is this a violation of my Constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and/or expression? Perhaps my friends and I simply felt we could only adequately express ourselves by loud singing in a public library. I encourage all of us to view this thread not only from the point of view of the singers, but also the viewpoint of the library staff and other library patrons. It is not outside the realm of reasonability for the library patrons to expect an environment conducive to personal study to be enforced within the walls of the library facility. Neither is it outside the realm of reasonability for members of a particularly-purposed forum to appreciate the forum environment being similarly policed. And that's all I have to say about that. ~B -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
