Category Archives: Law: Free Speech

The California (state) Appeals court issued its ruling today in Apple v. Does, a case in which I participated in a minor way as a signer of an amicus brief.

We won: The Court held that the Stored Communications Act prevents Apple from requesting the emails it sought from the ISP; instead Apple must go to the account holders directly, giving them notice and a chance to argue why the orders should not be granted.

The Court also held that the website editors are journalists entitled to claim the benefit of California’s Journalist Shield Law, which prevents them from being held in contempt for not disclosing sources, and also lets them claim the First Amendment’s protections for journalists.

This is, I fervently believe, the correct result. Congrats to EFF, and to Lauren Gelman who organized our brief.

It’s clear there’s a lot I need to learn about how people feel about religion — especially other people’s religions.

Personally, other people’s religious beliefs don’t threaten me except for the ones that incite people to violence or to unconstitutional legislation. (And, please, let’s not get into historical debates about precisely which religious sects that might be…). Thus, for example, I got myself into a little trouble last week by suggesting that during the stike UM classes might meet in near-by local religious establishments, including a local Catholic church. It seems that, contrary to my expectations, a small but appreciable minority of our students would be troubled by this, although I don’t know if it’s because, being church goers, they object to the profanation of the church’s common room (it’s not the main sanctuary, but I don’t know if that was clear at the time), or if they belong to a different tradition and would find entering a Catholic church in some way uncomfortable. Incidentally, since this same space is our local precinct’s polling station, and I and everyone in this neighborhood have been voting there for years, if it’s true that there’s something off-putting about the space we have a bigger problem than where to hold classes…

Which brings me to my complete mystification about this post at TalkLeft: Jerry Falwell: Jews and Muslims Can’t Go to Heaven:

Jerry Falwell gets further and further out there. His latest knucklehead theory is that Jews and Muslims can’t go to heaven.

While I am a strong supporter of the State of Israel and dearly love the Jewish people and believe them to be the chosen people of God, I continue to stand on the foundational biblical principle that all people — Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, etc. — must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to enter heaven. -Jerry Falwell

Blogger Jason Weisberger at Just Plain Bother has co-opted Falwell’s comments and urges you to click here and demand Falwell apologize.

Eh? “Knucklehead theory”? “Apologize”?

First off, this is hardly some new theory of Falwell’s: as I understand it, it’s pretty much routine, main-stream, evangelical Protestantism. And it’s not limited to Jews and Moslems: many evangelicals, including I’d suspect Jerry Falwell, believe that because only those ‘born again’ can go to Heaven, it follows that Catholics, not being ‘true Christians’, are excluded too (or damned, if you prefer). And many undoubtedly would say the same about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Scientologists.

Second, Falwell is surely entitled to believe whatever he wants about what it takes to get to Heaven. And to preach it. So long as he isn’t threatening anyone with violence in this life, nor asking the state to impose any disabilities on them, nor seeking for special government cash or legal status for his own church and faithful, why on earth should he have to apologize for professing his faith, even if might offend Jews, Moslems, Catholics, Mormons, Quakers, Buddhists and many others?

And anyway, why should people of other faiths be offended? Or even care? If some people believe something about an afterlife which happens to differ from my beliefs, what difference is it to me — so long as they neither try to speed me towards the afterlife nor try to limit me in the enjoyment (or even propagation) of my own views in this one? Not being part of his flock, Falwell’s views on the afterlife simply have no relevance to me. Isn’t letting him preach them the essence of the First Amendment bargain?

But evidently this is not as widely shared a view as I would have expected and hoped.

Hong Kong has “simplified” its Code of Practice on the Procedures for Handling Complaints Against Senders of Unsolicited Fax Advertisements, according to Xinhua. Under the new rules, the consequence of two substantiated complaints for sending unsolicited faxes is disconnection of the sender's telephone lines (all of them). Now, I know that a telephone operator's asserting the right summarily to disconnect people from the network is a dangerous thing — and that's all the more true when the operator is state-run. The basic genius of the first amendment is that avenues of communication should be removed as far as possible from state control, and it's not hard to imagine this used as a weapon against political dissidents who see a fax or two go astray. But still — the death penalty for junk faxers! A guy can dream, can't he?