by StarmanSkye » Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:15 am
Jeez, talk about a complex issue. Reading that the ACLU defended NAMBLA on some BS case some time ago, I did a quick search to find the score.<br><br>As might be predicted, the National Review was pretty critical of the ACLU for defending NAMBLA's practice of publishing virtual how-to manuals on 'How to Rape and get away with it'. Reading the opinion-article, I thought it made a pretty good case for NAMBLA's complicity. After all, there are laws against publishing or even posting links to 'How to construct home-made explosives' and 'How to wage terrorism', though I'm not sure about 'how to murder with impugnity', or 'how to poison your neighbor and get away with it'.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200402270920.asp">www.nationalreview.com/mu...270920.asp</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>--quote--<br>The Manhattan-based public-interest law firm is defending the North American Man-Boy Love Association in a $200 million civil lawsuit filed by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Curley. The Curleys claim that Charles Jaynes was driven by the literature and website of NAMBLA, an outfit that advocates sex between grown men and little boys, reportedly as young as age 8.<br><br>Jaynes did not simply read NAMBLA's materials and ponder its message. He and Salvatore Sicari actively sought a boy with whom to copulate. They picked 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge, Massachusetts. They lured him into their car as he played outside his home in October 1997. When Curley resisted their sexual advances, they choked him to death with a gasoline-soaked rag. Then they took the boy's body across state lines to Jayne's apartment in Manchester, New Hampshire. They molested the cadaver and stuffed it into a cement-filled Rubbermaid container. Finally, they crossed state lines again into Maine, whereupon they tossed Jeffrey Curley's remains into the Great Works River, from which it was recovered within days. Jaynes and Sicari were convicted of these crimes in 1998, for which they are serving life sentences.<br><br>So why blame NAMBLA? Is it any more responsible for this atrocity than is Vintage Books, the publisher of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita? Imagine that Jaynes and Sicari had read that 1955 novel about a middle-aged intellectual's affair with a 12-year-old girl. What if these two men found an equally young female who they abused and killed, just as they murdered Jeffrey Curley in real life? Putting aside the fact that Lolita is a work of fiction, would Vintage Books face civil justice?<br><br>Probably not, nor would NAMBLA if it limited its output to fictional depictions of "man-boy love." It is difficult to pin imaginary crimes on actual criminals who turn make-believe into mayhem.<br><br>Within the realm of nonfiction, as revolting as its ideas are, NAMBLA certainly has a First Amendment right to argue that America's laws should be changed to permit sexual relations between adult men and third-grade school boys. Most Americans would disagree vehemently, as well they should. That's called debate. It's the American way.<br><br>As ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director John Reinstein sees it: "Regardless of whether people agree with or abhor NAMBLA's views, holding the organization responsible for crimes committed by others who read their materials would gravely endanger important First Amendment freedoms."<br><br>However, as Fox News' Bill O'Reilly noted, there is more at play here than pamphleteering. "According to lawyers familiar with [NAMBLA's] website," O'Reilly explained, "it actually posted techniques designed to lure boys into having sex with men and also supplied information on what an adult should do if caught."<br><br>NAMBLA is "not just publishing material that says it's OK to have sex with children and advocating changing the law," says Larry Frisoli, a Cambridge attorney who is arguing the Curleys case in federal court. NAMBLA, he says, "is actively training their members how to rape children and get away with it. They distribute child pornography and trade live children among NAMBLA members with the purpose of having sex with them."<br><br>Frisoli cites a NAMBLA publication he calls "The Rape and Escape Manual." Its actual title is "The Survival Manual: The Man's Guide to Staying Alive in Man-Boy Sexual Relationships."<br><br>"Its chapters explain how to build relationships with children," Frisoli tells me. "How to gain the confidence of children's parents. Where to go to have sex with children so as not to get caught...There is advice, if one gets caught, on when to leave America and how to rip off credit card companies to get cash to finance your flight. It's pretty detailed."<br><br>"In his diary, Jaynes said he had reservations about having sex with children until he discovered NAMBLA," Frisoli continues. "It's in his diary in 1996, around the time he joined NAMBLA, one year before the death of Jeffrey Curley."<br><br>The practical, step-by-step advice Jaynes followed goes far beyond appeals to sway public opinion in favor of pedophilia. Such language aids and abets felonious conduct. If such conspiracy results in homicide, it is reasonable for NAMBLA to face civil liability if not criminal prosecution.<br><br>Ohio's Court of Appeals found NAMBLA complicit in an earlier child-rape case. NAMBLA's literature, discovered in a defendant's possession, reflected "preparation and purpose," according to the Buckeye State's top bench.<br>--unquote--<br>*****<br>But then, the ACLU argues that the issue of Free Speech involves the defense of repugnant speech no less than something one agrees with, and that people MUST be held personally accountable for their actions -- not scapegoating someone else's free speech -- an eminently sensible argument.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/protest/11289prs20000831.html">www.aclu.org/freespeech/p...00831.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>--quote--<br>ACLU Statement on Defending Free Speech of Unpopular Organizations (8/31/2000)<br>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<br><br>NEW YORK--In the United States Supreme Court over the past few years, the American Civil Liberties Union has taken the side of a fundamentalist Christian church, a Santerian church, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. In celebrated cases, the ACLU has stood up for everyone from Oliver North to the National Socialist Party. In spite of all that, the ACLU has never advocated Christianity, ritual animal sacrifice, trading arms for hostages or genocide. In representing NAMBLA today, our Massachusetts affiliate does not advocate sexual relationships between adults and children.<br><br>What the ACLU does advocate is robust freedom of speech for everyone. The lawsuit involved here, were it to succeed, would strike at the heart of freedom of speech. The case is based on a shocking murder. But the lawsuit says the crime is the responsibility not of those who committed the murder, but of someone who posted vile material on the Internet. The principle is as simple as it is central to true freedom of speech: those who do wrong are responsible for what they do; those who speak about it are not.<br><br>It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive. That was true when the Nazis marched in Skokie. It remains true today. <br>--unquote--<br>*****<br>I'd sure hate to have to decide this case. It would be WAY too easy to just hold the case was too heinous and bestial for NAMBLA to be held entirely blameless for publishing provocative information appealing to base criminal impulses and that materially aided the commission of a crime -- after all, one CAN'T (or at least shouldn't) yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, eh? Well, admittedly, NAMBLA did a bit more than 'just' speak falsely, precipitating panic and trampling. But on the other hand, no matter how provocative the information they posted was, nobody in NAMBLA committed the actual murder. Is this akin to fomenting violence? In the present climate of hysterical 'War on Terra' hypervigilantism, I'd be wary of even a mild advocacy of Revolution to right chronic wrongs and injustices of a corrupt, criminal bureaucracy (well, I'd choose my words carefully to emphasize the crucial moral principle in the context of a subverted system that has lost its authority and legitimacy).<br><br>This issue illustrates how crucial the role of legal precedence and the history of legal opinion is to deciding such a controversial, complex issue of law re: accountability. (The larger context is one in which such murders occur and are prosecuted, while far bigger murderers and state-sanctioned war-criminals, racketeers and terrorists enjoy the privelege of total immunity.)<br><br>It's an upside-down world alright.<br>Starman<br><br>-- Notwithstanding the national Review and Neroy Murdock (author of the above crit) is a dyed-in-the-wool neocon shameless asskissing shill -- his 'The Butcher with the Terror Ties' (<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200601130811.asp)">www.nationalreview.com/mu...30811.asp)</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> is SO appallingly duplicious (making the case that the evidence for Saddam's links to Al Qaeda and sponsorship of Terrorism is overwhelming -- while blithely ignoring the evidence that the US/CIA's ties to Al Qaeda and Terrorism are a thousand times greater) that I simply don't have adequate words for such a deliberately-or-carelessly naive scam-job.<br><br>At one point, Murdock cites Cheney (that paragon of well-informed flumoxed blarney) as saying, "Steve Hayes is of the view — and I think he’s correct — that a lot of those documents that were captured over there that have not yet been evaluated offer additional evidence that, in fact, there was a relationship that stretched over many years between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda organization.” Note -- This is the SAME idiot who absolutely KNEW Saddam had WMD -- and even said he KNEW where they were (but wouldn't tell the UN Weapons Team?!?!)<br><br>Sometimes I think America's long and dismal history of double-standards and hypocrisy, imposing debt-peonage and exploitation, promoting coups and propping-up despotic dictators, training Death Squads and starving hundreds of thousands of people, aiding if/when not actually waging genocide and terrorizing people for corporate payola and twisted, self-serving ideological purposes, bombing and pillaging, perpetuating suffering and starvation and horrors while denying responsibility and perfecting moral cowardice, has finally caught-up with it -- and that's WHY we have such incorrigibly shameful 'leaders' who are worthy of nothing save our most profound contempt. (But then, what can we expect, when our 'Prez' has a direct legacy with profitting from Nazi war-crimes. Idi Amin was typical of murderers the CIA propped-up -- our 'allies' the Saudis eventually granted him political asylum when his regime toppled, despite his regime having killed and horribly mutilated some 300,000 citizens.)<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
