Xref: utzoo news.misc:2830 alt.flame:5642
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!chinet!patrick
From: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson)
Newsgroups: news.misc,alt.flame
Subject: Re: Freedom of hate
Message-ID: <8132@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 5 Apr 89 07:19:04 GMT
References: <14130@gryphon.COM>
Reply-To: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson)
Followup-To: news.misc
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 139

In article <14130@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:

>Tolerating homosexuals is ``in vogue'' ?

Come on! I don't call in here to give English grammar lessons. Look at your
own dictionary in the future instead of expecting me to define things.
Toleration of homosexuals is a popular stance these days. It has not always
been so. Many years ago homosexuals were treated as badly as, say, the
blacks in South Africa. Even worse, actually: in the seventeenth century
and earlier they were burned at the stake. Used as, uh, faggots. I think
that is how they came to be called by the same word.

>Perhaps we can look forward to the day when it's ``in vogue'' to
>tolerate blacks in South Africa ?

Well, let's hope so. I think the treatment they get from the government
there is detestable. Not only are the South African blacks treated badly,
their defenders are also hassled. It is not uncommon for the government
there to silence persons thought to stir up the blacks and cause some
aggravation for the government. They prohibit them from giving public
speeches among other things. It sort of reminds one of the way Mr. Verity
at Penn State responds to troublesome speech-makers.
 
>Whitehead advocated killing homosexuals, and you're blathering about
>free speech ?

Why of course I am. Isn't that the proper ACLU-like position to take on
the matter? Didn't the American Nazis go to the village of Skokie, IL
and advocate killing Jews with the ACLU's blessings and assistance?
Aren't most liberal homosexual activists great supporters of the ACLU?
All of a sudden when it is homosexuals suggested as the objects of the
genocide the deal is off huh?

If the American Nazis can go to the village of Skokie with the blessings
of a federal judge and the ACLU has the nerve to blanket it in free speech
then why can't Whitehead go to the 'electronic village' called soc.motss
and advocate the same hateful things?

>Two things are guarenteed to get your net.access pulled. 1) doing
>something illegal and getting caught and.....

Speech is never illegal in this country, according to the ACLU. If all
that distinquishes Whitehead from others similarly situated at PSU is
his speech, then no crime has been committed. Ask any ACLU lawyer. You
*do* support the ACLU, don't you? On the other hand, if Whitehead failed
to pay his tuition, or computer access fees, or whatever; or he broke
broke into another user's account -- or actually did something ILLEGAL --
then yes, one might argue that his computer access should be removed; and
this would of neccessity include his access to Usenet, at least from that
site.
 
> 2) doing something
>so completely stupid that you cause hundreds if not thousands
>of pieces of mail to be zapped to the powers that be at the site
>where you perpetrated the completely stupid act.

Whitehead did not generate all the messages which went back to his site.
Those were generated by the users who wrote him or his sysadmin -- not
the other way around. Whitehead wrote one message, posted a dozen places.
How many of you wrote back, cross posting everywhere in the process?
So who was the biggest waster of bandwidth?

>So where do you draw the line Patrick?

I can draw the line almost anywhere except when when it comes to the liberal
hypocrisy I see spouted off by those of you who on the one hand support
freedom of speech for every crazed fool who comes along except when your
own little village is violated. Everytime I *even imply* there might be some
limits to obnoxious behavior which the ACLU supports under the guise of
the United States Constitution I get a ton of replies from folks telling me
I should not pick on a fine, noble, wonderful group like ACLU.

Well, I think if the ACLU did get interested in Whitehead's case, they would
be on his side. 

>What if there was an .EDU site
>that spewed anti-semitic white power neo nazi garbage into
>a few newsgroups ? Would you stand of for their freedom of speech?
>What if they used it as a vehice to organize death groups ? Freedom
>of speech ?  Even if the school itself did'nt want this to
>continue ?

Well I would not like it at all. But what makes you think I *liked*
Mr. Whitehead's speech? As far as I am concerned, a plague on all of
your houses! I repeat: it was not Whitehead's message I support, nor
is it anti-semitic white power messages I am exclusively against. I just
thought it funny that a group of people (homosexuals) who for many
years have been among the biggest allies of the American 'Civil Liberties'
Union one day got their own oxe gored. Their own little village got 
invaded by someone who came to spread hate and discontent. And after years
of indoctrination in The True Meaning Of Free Speech And The American Way,
*they suddenly forgot, or chose to ignore all their lessons*.

Let me be frank, and succinct with you: I can argue this with you from
either side of the coin. You want to switch roles for awhile? You argue
in favor of the speech, and I will argue against it. Whenever you wish,
we will switch sides again. This is a very gray area, and I must say in
all honesty his speech was repugnant to me. But so are your ethics and
the apparent inability of the residents of soc.motss to be consistent in
their views; at least of the several who wrote to get Whitehead banned
from speaking.

>Of course if merely being a fucking moron was grounds to get your
>account pulled, you'd probably be kicked off portal. Or is that what
>happened ?

Were you speaking to me or addressing that part of the message to Verity
over at Penn State? My problem with Portal actually had nothing to do with
Portal at all, but with Telenet's new 30 hours for $30 limit and the change
in pricing by Illinois Bell which made a call to the Telenet switcher 
downtown become a timed call amounting to about $2.50 per hour. When both
Telenet and telco were giving untimed, unlimited calling, Portal was one
of the best deals I have ever seen, at $10 per month for several good
features of which Usenet was only one. I already use the 30 hour allotment
from Telenet for other stuff, and really did not want to run into overtime
with those people and another $30/$60 per month fee for 30/60 hours of
reading/writing Usenet. Phone bills of $300-400 per month are not fun.

Then too, I could have (and was invited by Portal to) maintain Telecom
Digest and comp.dcom.telecom from a machine at the Portal site; but to
do so, a huge list of arpanet addresses would have had to be converted to
uucp style addressing, and it just made better sense to work it locally from
a machine here and do Usenet from chinet, a local, untimed phone call.

Speaking of fucking morons, however, I should tell you about the time Harvey
Grossman (local ACLU executive) and I were over at the courthouse and we
got to talking about Walter Polovchak, the kid from the Soviet Union who
wanted asylum in this country. But that's a story for another day.

Remember, show consistency! Either free speech is for everyone, including
people who hate homosexuals, or it is for no one. Or was it porn dealers
that had to have it in order for the rest of us to have it? Athiests??
Anyway, you get my point, I think.


-- 
Patrick Townson 
  patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / ptownson@bu-cs.bu.edu / US Mail: 60690-1570 
  FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) /  MCI Mail: 222-4956