George Will on the latest soon-to-be-overturned 9th Circuit constitutional atrocity

Posted on June 24, 2007

Marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values. That sentence is inflammatory, perhaps even a hate crime.

At least it is in Oakland, Calif. That city’s government says those words italicized here constitute something akin to hate speech, and can be proscribed from the government’s open e-mail system and employee bulletin board.

When the McCain-Feingold law empowered government to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political campaign speech about government, it was predictable that the right of free speech would increasingly be sacrificed to various social objectives that free speech supposedly impedes. And it was predictable that speech suppression would become an instrument of cultural combat, used to settle ideological scores and advance political agendas by silencing adversaries.

That has happened in Oakland. And, predictably, the ineffable 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ratified this abridgement of First Amendment protections. Fortunately, overturning the 9th Circuit is steady work for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some African-American Christian women working for Oakland’s government organized the Good News Employee Association (GNEA), which they announced with a flier describing their group as “a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family Values.”

The flier was distributed after other employees’ groups, including those advocating gay rights, had advertised their political views and activities on the city’s e-mail system and bulletin board. When the GNEA asked for equal opportunity to communicate by that system and that board, they were denied. Furthermore, the flier they posted was taken down and destroyed by city officials, who declared it “homophobic” and disruptive.

The city government said the flier was “determined to promote harassment based on sexual orientation.” The city warned that the flier and communications like it could result in disciplinary action “up to and including termination.”

There are those who defend this decision by saying that it only applies to the one bulletin board in close proximity to the offended lesbian and that the group still has access to the email announcement system and in fora “outside work.” What a joke. The “access” they have to the email system carries the same restrictions on speech content that got the fliers torn down. They have “access,” but what they say may result in termination. I guess blacks in the Jim Crow South had “access” to busses and shouldn’t have complained. Oh, OK, they can talk about the “natural family” outside work…the immeasurbale beneficence of the government and the courts in action.

Bottom line — this is content-based viewpoint discrimination in its purest form. The homosexual crowd is permitted to promote a social and political agenda using all available communication fora in this government workplace virtually without restriction. So should this group of Christians who hold the mainstream views of the vast majority of Americans. OTOH, if the homosexuals may suppress the speech of others simply by having their feelings hurt, the Christians should have similar veto power. No one who respects the First Amendment wants that — not the least of all, our Founders. If the First Amendment only protects speech that makes everyone “comfortable,” it protects nothing at all.

The Christians weren’t asking that the “Happy ‘Coming Out’ Day” messages be censored. The censors reside on the side of the debate on which they always reside. Of course, no one except the radical homosexual agendists think that someone’s feelings of “exclusion” trump the First Amendment.

Captian’s Quarters takes this issue on: Thought Police Arises In Oakland, Bolstered By The 9th Circuit

» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Church And State, Communism, News

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One Response to “George Will on the latest soon-to-be-overturned 9th Circuit constitutional atrocity”

golden phoenix on June 24th, 2007 10:34 pm

This is the same bunch of idiot judges who said that the pledge is unconstitutional and all becuase of one self centered atheists jerk MICHEAL NEWDOW and the 9th curcut court is in SAN FRANCISCO or HANOI ON THE BAY