- Australia will now join China in blocking free access
to the internet. Responding to decades of pressure from the Anti-Defamation
League, the Australian government has announced it will ban all "illegal"
internet content produced in or entering Australia. Under ADL-orchestrated
Australian hate laws, it has already been unlawful to hold up homosexuals,
Jews and Muslims to "humiliation or intimidation" in the public
forum, including the internet. Incoming material on the internet, however,
has remained largely unregulated.
-
- The government, projecting a comprehensive internet filter,
originally assured internet users that they could legally receive banned
content by contacting their providers and circumventing such restrictions.
Now the government says they can't. All illegal content, which should include
everything from pornography to political and religious speech violating
Australia's hate laws, will be forbidden. It will be illegal to create
or receive communication which the government disapproves.
-
- Actually, according to Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers
Australia, the National Internet Filter would have little effect on such
illegal internet content as child pornography since it would not cover
file-sharing networks. We may conclude that politically incorrect speech
would probably bear the brunt of censorship. (See, "<http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24568137-2862,00.html>Australia
to implement mandatory internet censorship")
-
- Meanwhile, ADL and its European arm INACH, the International
Network Against Cyber Hate, tirelessly work to find legal resources and
technology capable of ending criticism of homosexuality, Jews and Israel
on the internet. ADL admits this is difficult through conventional legal
or technological means.
-
- But it's not difficult when ADL can persuade governments
to ban "hate speech" outright!
-
- Is America Next?
-
- How could America, ostensibly protected by the First
Amendment, also lose free speech on the internet?
-
- For starters, Congress could pass ADL's federal hate
crimes bill, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, this winter.
In 1971, Canada enacted ADL's very similar federal hate law. Soon, it
was extended to criminalize "hate speech" originating on Canadian
websites. Sec. 13.1 of Canada's human rights statute outlaws even such
internet speech as is "likely" to cause embarrassment to federally
protected groups.
-
- If the Obama/ADL hate bill is passed, internet "homophobic
hate speech" in evangelical media, as well as in pulpits, will become
illegal. 1 The hate bill is ostensibly directed only against violent hate
crimes in the States. However, a federal hate bill will quickly overflow
such limits, as prosecutors and judges broaden it to protection of the
"hurt feelings" of sodomites.
-
- Hate crime laws, whether state, federal, or international,
are already showing an alarming tendency to overreach existing legal definitions
and restraints. Hate gestapos indict, letting the tedious court system
catch up with them, perhaps years later. The main objective of current
hate law strategy is to press the limits, seeing how much can be gotten
away with. Prosecutors hope to shape public opinion, frighten opponents
and set legal precedents that will provide steppingstones to even greater
assaults on freedom.
-
- Free Speech Casualty in Canada
-
- One evangelical casualty of Canada's hate law is Rev.
Stephen Boissoin. Canada's Free Speech Monitor: "For writing a letter
critical of homosexuality to the Red Deer Advocate, he had been ordered
by the Alberta Human Rights commission to pay a $7,000 fine, apologize
for criticizing one of Canada's privileged minorities (homosexuals) and
never again, in any venue, criticize homosexuals. He has thus been asked
to renounce a key tenet of the Christian faith. In times past, men and
women have died rather than knuckle under to political correctness and
renounce their faith. Rev. Boissoin is defiant and has vowed no apology
and is appealing the outrageous decision. In a decision reminiscent of
Red China executing dissidents and then sending a bill for the bullet to
the victims' families, Rev. Boissoin was ordered to compensate his persecutor
to the tune of $5,000 for the time and effort he had spent trying to gag
the pastor."
-
- Quoting from LifeSite News (June 9, 2008):
-
- "On Friday [June 6], the Alberta Human Rights Commission
ordered Alberta pastor Steven Boissoin to desist from expressing his views
on homosexuality in any sort of public forum. He was also commanded to
pay damages equivalent to $7,000 as a result of the tribunal's November
decision to side with complainant and homosexual activist Dr. Darren Lund.
The tribunal has also called for Boissoin to personally apologize to Lund
via a public statement to the local newspaper
-
- Lund made his complaint after Boissoin published a letter
to the editor in the Red Deer Advocate in which he denounced homosexuality
as immoral and dangerous, and called into question new gay rights curricula
permeating the province's educational system. "Children as young as
five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically
damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system;
all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights," wrote Boissoin in
the letter. In an interview, Boissoin told LifeSite News.com that he's
under attack not only for his letter but, more significantly, for his beliefs.
'The point I am trying to make here is what's being attacked at the core
is what I believe, according to my personal beliefs and my religious beliefs.'
Most disturbingly, says Boissoin, is that the ruling calls for him to 'cease
publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, with public speeches,
or on the internet, in the future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.'
Boissoin wondered to what extent the right to freedom of expression in
Canada will be deteriorated, stating, 'I am not allowed to hold onto my
views.' 'Absurd beyond absurd-I will never make a public apology; I stand
by what I said.'"
-
-
- Worse Could Come
-
- Christians/conservatives, this and much worse are what
you can expect in the years ahead if ADL's federal hate bill is passed
this winter. Though discouraged by the Obama/Democrat victory, you must
rouse yourselves to protest!
-
- Two years ago, when ADL reintroduced their federal hate
crimes bill into the House in the first week of January, the religious
right did virtually nothing to warn their constituents. Only after I alerted
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh of the crisis in mid-February and his crucial
WND article went out to millions did massive protest to Congress begin.
(See, <http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/killerinstinct.html>Killer
Instinct Needed to Defeat Hate Bill)
-
- Free speech will not survive if Christian/conservative
America repeats such delay. From the moment the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes
Prevention Act is reintroduced, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council,
American Family Association, WorldNetDaily, and many evangelical leadership
groups must initiate a flood of protest to the House, particularly members
of the House Judiciary Committee. We must respond as if our freedom depends
on it, or we will probably never get another chance to save liberty. As
in China, Canada, and now Australia, free speech will become a memory,
perhaps never to be grasped again.
-
-
- Endnote:
-
- 1. The original 1968 federal hate law, upon which
present federal hate bills greatly expand, criminalizes speech. It says
that if anyone's public speech encourages another to an act of hate-motivated
violence, the original speaker can be tried as a federal hate criminal
along with the active offender whom he has influenced.
- Title 18, U.S.C., Sec. 2a says:
- (a) Whoever commits an offense against the United
States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission,
is punishable as a principal.
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