[PLUG-TALK] Porn on the Net...

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Wed Oct 28 01:55:01 UTC 2009


On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Russell Johnson wrote:
> No, no, no. There is a reason the right to free speech is 1st in the
> bill of rights. Free speech is the most important human right there
> is. Once you trample free speech, human rights are gone.

Russell, the first amendment didn't need to take a back seat to human 
rights in the 1780s when the Bill of Rights was written because there was 
pretty much no conception that speech or press could possibly be 
detrimental to human rights.

Now, Michael's ideas are kooky in the extreme (due to his correlated 
handicaps of disorganized thought, muddy reasoning, and Catholicism), but 
it is true that we can inhibit the PRODUCTION of certain destructive media 
because the production is an illegal act (rather than the dissemination, 
which is the speech act legally).  So while it may be perfectly legal to 
distribute pictures of yourself having sex with a dog and, indeed, 
perfectly legal to take such pictures, it can be illegal to have sex with 
the dog in the first place.  In that aspect, the "speech" takes a backseat 
to the rights of the participants in its production.

Michael, of course, wants to go way too far with this and cites his 
extreme minority opinions on the nature of sexual morality (his is much 
more like a hardline muslim fundamentalist than like the average American 
Christian -- let alone average American) and made-up facts about the 
relationship between sexual abuse and adult entertainment.  Leaving all of 
that aside, there is a point where speech and other rights collide and the 
right of speech does not supersede and that's not a bad thing.

J.



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