Audio: 'Fallacious speech' laws are what these folks should really fear

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02/26/2010

by Jeremy Hooper

Pee-Fox No LGBT activist -- NO LGBT ACTIVIST! -- is trying to use the recently-enacted federal hate crimes law against Regina Griggs or PFOX. And if anyone were to file suit against PFOX on such grounds, LGBT people and progressives would surely be the first to stand up and challenge the lawsuit (which would immediately be tossed anyway). Because the hate crimes law applies to action -- not speech. We've said so until we're blue in the face.

But none of this will stop PFOX and friends at the Liberty Counsel from spinning resistance to their anti-scientific school fliers into a matter pertaining to the hate crimes law:

(click to play audio clip)
*SOURCE: "Freedom's Call Radio" - 2/25 [LC]

Look, we hate the fact that they are pushing such junk science to kids. Loathe it, actually. But there is no law that would allow us to use the federal government to come down against these fliers, nor would we want there to be one! There are plenty of reasons why we think these kinds of fliers could and should be barred from public schooling (factual inaccuracy, discriminatory, promote hostility, etc.), but these reasons have nothing to do with the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Act that congress passed and President Obama signed into law!

Once again we have the far-right obfuscating truth in the name of their own political agendas, something that they seemingly love to do even more than they love to hurt gay families. But we will continue to challenge and refute their hurtful and offensive fallacy with our own power of speech, not through a vain lawsuit with zero legal merit. Hopefully someday they will respect both us and the national discourse enough to swim in the waters of reality rather than in the opportunistic holy water that buoys their entire movement.

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