With more and more people making web pages along with new and easy ways to create web pages, the question of whether some pages can be removed due to unacceptable material often comes up. Many people use the First Amendment as their defense, which grants people the freedom of speech, press, and expression. However, does this freedom have a limit?
Yes! I believe that the freedom of speech does have a limit! While I do believe in the freedom to express oneself and one's opinions, it is being taken way too far.
White supremacist groups (such as the Ku Klux Klan) sites are on the rise. The sites are specifically armed with arcade-style games, music, bulletin boards, and other gimmicks to recruit people, especially young people. World Church of the Creator church leader, Matt Hale (27), says that children are fair game in recruiting. He claims that "Sesame Street goes after young kids with their agenda about race and tolerance. I see no reason why we shouldn't bring a message like this." That's insane! People are not killing one another because they watch Sesame Street! People aren't dragging Black men tied to the end of their pick-up for miles because of Sesame Street! It's common sense here! Hale has also said, "Our organization is a LOVE group," and that members of his group "care about our White Race…and wish to preserve it." That is so ridiculously stupid! Blacks, Hispanics, and Jews have just as much of a right to live and be happy as Whites do: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!" It's so disgusting to think that these people are designing their web-sites to be targeted towards children and teens. Targeted to recruit them and teach them to hate people that are "different" from them. While I believe that the KKK has the right to express what they believe, I do not believe that they have the right to recruit future murderers. It's wrong!
I recently watched a program on TV about radical Pro-Lifers and their sites. One man listed the names and addresses of abortion clinic doctors in the form of a hit list. When one would be killed, he would cross of their name. That's wrong! While I do believe that Pro-Lifers have the right to express their opinions, I sure as Hell know that the abortion doctors have a right to live. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!" Could it get any clearer?!
Anti-gay sites are also on the rise. The web-site of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, states that "Matthew Shepard has been in Hell for X days." Ben Phelps is the webmaster of this site. His grandfather, the pastor of the church, has openly said that, "We define ourselves as a church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and God hates fags." That's insane! Matthew Shepard was beaten and tortured. He didn't deserve to die like that. No one does! These sites are teaching people that hating and killing are OK. It's not! Gay people aren't hurting anyone by loving someone of the same-sex. They deserve to live just as much as hetero people do: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"
I believe that Dwight D. Eisenhower was right in saying, "Don't join the burners. Don't be afraid to go to your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency: that should be your only censorship." However, some things go too far for the first amendment to protect. The First Amendment (along with the other nine Amendments in the Bill of Rights) was ratified in 1791! This is over a hundred years before the radio and obviously way before the TV! No one even dreamed that we would have computers that were all linked together and that people would be making web pages! Our Constitution seriously needs to be updated. People are taking their "freedoms" way out of hand, and something needs to be done about it.
In Schenck v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree." I believe that there are sites out there that do "create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." People are dying! I sure as Hell know that I don't want to be killed by some White supremacist, skinhead just because I'm gay. It's bullshit that people are dying.
I don't care if someone puts up his/her site saying how being gay isn't right, and that the Bible doesn't condone it (although it still makes me sick). I don't care if someone puts up their site saying how they believe that interracial marriage is wrong (that too makes me sick). I don't care if someone puts up a site saying that abortion doctors are murderers. However, I cannot accept someone putting up their site to recruit young people to hate and kill. I cannot accept people putting up hit lists to kill people and making a game out of people's lives.
It's time that something is done. It is time that we take the time to re-write the Constitution or something to define the fine line between "freedom" and going beyond that "freedom." People have the right to live. They deserve that right.
LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS! It's all common sense, people!
