Speaker Banned in Indiana
I just came across this reportlast month of an animal rights speaker banned by the Provost from talking at the University of Southern Indiana on the grounds that outside speakers must “not advocate violation of any federal or state law.” I have nothing but contempt for the idiot fringe of the animal rights movement, but this kind of censorship is shocking. By this standard, Martin Luther King Jr. and anyone else who ever advocated civil disobedience would be banned from speaking on campus. So, too, would nearly all conservatives be banned, such as those who ever supported Oliver North's illicit aid to the Contras or urged the assassination of a foreign dictator. If this had been a conservative speaker banned from a campus, we would have heard widespread outrage and publicity; instead, we only find out about the censorship in Indiana because a right-wing blog decided to brag about the banning of a left-wing speaker.
1 comment:
You're right, that's the danger of the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) in a nutshell. If you read this law carefully, you will realize that ANY kind of civil disobedience is now dangerous on university campuses or in front of businesses and other places that have anything to do with raising, selling, exhibiting, or experimenting on animals (i.e., biology or research labs on your campus), EVEN IF THE PROTEST IS TOTALLY UNRELATED TO ANIMAL ISSUES.
As a moderate animal rights advocate who does nothing but write letters and articles and hold signs on sidewalks to protest the treatment of animals, even I am in danger these days.
You're right, it's shocking, and most Americans don't even know about AETA because it was passed by voice vote of only FIVE members of the House (Kucinich was the only one who voted against it, bless him) pretty much secretively and signed by Bush after being raced through the Senate by Feinstein and Inhofe.
Write to your representatives in Congress and ask them to repeal AETA because it's unconstitutional.
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