Marriage is the foundation of the natural family and sustains family values. That sentence is inflammatory, perhaps even a hate crime.<\/i><\/p>\n
At least it is in Oakland, Calif. That city’s government says those words italicized here constitute something akin to hate speech, and can be proscribed from the government’s open e-mail system and employee bulletin board.<\/p>\n
When the McCain-Feingold law empowered government to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political campaign speech about government, it was predictable that the right of free speech would increasingly be sacrificed to various social objectives that free speech supposedly impedes. And it was predictable that speech suppression would become an instrument of cultural combat, used to settle ideological scores and advance political agendas by silencing adversaries.<\/p>\n
That has happened in Oakland. And, predictably, the ineffable 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ratified this abridgement of First Amendment protections. Fortunately, overturning the 9th Circuit is steady work for the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n