When I began following free speech controversies, I was a First Amendment absolutist. Now I’m something less comfortable. I still think free speech is a good idea, certainly better than alternatives I’ve come across, but I’ve learned that everyone has a line that can’t be crossed, a word that sticks in the craw, an image that feels like a kick to the gut. The First Amendment, bless its little heart, always eventually lets us down (self-protection is innate, tolerance an acquired taste), so how can I not be bothered by its limitations?

This is a running log of arguments over free speech – some silly, some funny, some hard -- because free speech is all about argument. Being able to speak our mind makes us feel good and it's essential to real democracy and fairness. Yet, in the end, one of the best reasons to keep our speech rights intact is that we miss them when they’re gone.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

there's Colorado, there's Florida, and there's sex with minors

I'm not in favor of preying upon children, sexually or otherwise, either, but this is about a book, not an action.  While I started reading the report, I assumed Greaves III, who self-published what's been described as a "how-to guide for pedophiles," was nabbed for uploading something on the internet in Colorado that got downloaded in Florida, but, no.  It was the good old US postal service, which he used to send a signed copy of his book to an undercover cop.  Not.  So.  Smart.

Reminds me of the sting used a decade ago to get Mike Diana, then a young artist of gross-out, underground comic books, on obscenity charges when he was living with his mother in Florida.  (I told his story in Outspoken.)  Along with the Smithsonian pulling David Wojnarowicz’s film “A Fire in My Belly” -- objected to by pols who never saw it, of course -- I'm getting real deja vu whiplash.
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