Tag Archives: freedom of speech

Law & Crime reports: The president of West Texas A&M University faces a federal lawsuit calling his cancellation of a student group’s drag show to benefit LGBTQ+ suicide prevention “textbook viewpoint discrimination” that violates the First Amendment. Student group Spectrum WT, which scheduled a show titled “A Fool’s Drag Race” for March 31, seeks an injunction forcing the university to …

The Texas Tribune reports: West Texas A&M President Walter Wendler is drawing ire for canceling a student drag show, arguing that such performances degrade women and are “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.” Wendler said drag shows “stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood” in a Monday letter. Wendler said the drag show was …

The New York Times reports: Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets. A Republican proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, …

The New York Post reports: Larry Flynt — the controversial porn peddler who built an empire that included “Hustler” magazine — reportedly died on Wednesday. He was 78. Flynt, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a 1978 murder attempt, succumbed to heart failure in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, TMZ reported. The mogul was known for his myriad …

CNET reports: The Justice Department will propose rolling back the legal protections online platforms have had since the ’90s, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, to make sites more vigilant about policing content. It follows President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting social media companies. The proposal could be announced on Wednesday, reported the Journal, citing a Trump administration official. …

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump is expected to order a review of a law that has long protected Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google from being responsible for the material posted by their users, according to a draft executive order and a source familiar with the situation. The executive order would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to propose and clarify …

The Christian Post reports: A federal judge ruled last week that the state of Kentucky violated the First Amendment by denying an atheist a license plate saying “IM GOD,” and has ordered the state to pay more than $150,000 in legal fees to the attorneys who represented the lawsuit. Freedom From Religion Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union-Kentucky attorneys represented …

Mediaite reports: President Donald Trump had a lot to say at the White House Social Media Summit on Thursday, including offering his take on what does and does not constitute free speech. “So to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad, to me that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry …

Devin Nunes surely approves. The Moscow Times reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a controversial set of bills that make it a crime to “disrespect” the state and spread “fake news” online, Russian media reported on Monday. The bills amending existing information laws overwhelmingly passed both chambers of Russian parliament in less than two months. Observers and some lawmakers …

The Daily Beast reports: Freedom of the press may be guaranteed in the Constitution. But a plurality of Republicans want to give President Trump the authority to close down certain news outlets, according to a new public opinion survey conducted by Ipsos and provided exclusively to The Daily Beast. All told, 43 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they believed …

The Washington Examiner reports: Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., is questioning whether President Trump is still committed to preserving the First Amendment after he repeatedly floated retribution against the media for publishing stories he doesn’t like. “Mr. President: Words spoken by the President of the United States matter. Are you tonight recanting of the oath you took on January 20th to …

“I should sue the Pope for plagiarism because if you match word-for-word what I said and what he said, it’s almost identical.”

Via Yahoo News: Pope Francis said Thursday there are limits to freedom of expression, especially when it insults or ridicules someone’s faith. Francis spoke about the Paris terror attacks while en route to the Philippines, defending free speech as not only a fundamental human right but a duty to speak one’s mind for the sake of the common good. But …

Piss Christ was hammered into pieces in 2011 by Catholic protesters during its display at a French gallery.

Via the Los Angeles Times: The road to gay rights at the U.S. Supreme Court began not in San Francisco or New York, but in a small downtown Los Angeles office, where volunteer writers and editors in 1953 launched a new “magazine for homosexuals.” ONE, as it was called, offered thoughtful articles, defiant editorials and none of the racy photos …

Despite what Donohue claims above, it is Hewitt who destroys in a segment that aired nationwide today on the Salem Radio Network. (Salem is the parent company of Twitchy, Townhall, and other far-right sites.) Hewitt, perhaps obviously, is himself a far-right Christianist, which only makes his truly brutal evisceration of Bill Donohue much, much more enjoyable. Hit the link and …

Remember the teenager in Pennsylvania who faces two years in juvenile detention for posing on a statue of Jesus? This happened this weekend: A successful protest, where several dozen people rallied in favor of free speech, was marred on Saturday, when a belligerent group of counter protesters, including two from what appeared to be a motorcycle gang, crashed the demonstration …

“I have contended for years that the First Amendment, as given by the Founders, provides religious liberty protections for Christianity only. Most attorney types, befuddled by years of untethered Supreme Court activism, think it covers any and all religions you can name. The results of this expansive but badly misguided understanding of the First Amendment have not been too costly …

“In both Britain and Canada, for example, we still had blasphemy laws on the books no less then ten years ago. The penalties – the penal sanctions – were fines and possible imprisonment, not hangings and whippings, but this is beside the point. [snip] One can advocate for the law principle, while not advocating for a particular type of punishment, …