Teacher Suspended, Travel Restricted, Police Raid Home -- for Writing Novel

Sometimes you wonder if those who run police departments, those who run our schools, have
ever read the First Amendment. Indeed, sometimes you wonder if they have ever read anything at all.

A teacher has been suspended, taken into custody and subjected to psychiatric examination. Where did such an outrage occur? The Soviet Union in the days of Solzhenitsyn? North Korea?  Maybe Iran?

Nope.  It took place just a few days ago in Maryland.  Maryland in the Good Ol' Frickin' First Amendment U S of A.

The current online Atlantic Magazine contains one of the most disturbing stories I have ever read. And if you care anything about writing, and the right to write, you should be disturbed, too. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.

Patrick McLaw, a 23-year-old middle school English teacher at Lane Middle School in Cambridge, Maryland has been taken into custody, suspended from his teaching job, and forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation for writing a novel.  Police have used K-9 dogs and searched his house and the school.  They proudly announced that Mr. McLaw "does not have the ability to travel anywhere."

The Insurrectionist, published under the pseudonym Dr. K. S. Voltaer, is set 900 years in the future. Following the largest mass killing at a school in history, agents of a secret government agency begin tracing clues that lead to threats for an even larger mass-killing at the nation's largest school.  The book was published in 2011 by Northern Imperial Publishing, and is available on Amazon.

I haven't read the book, so I don't know how good it is. But It sounds like a decent premise for a futuristic thriller.

But because the subject of the  novel is a mass school killing -- 900 years in the future! -- the school district suspended Mr. McLaw, he was thrown in a psyche ward, and police are investigating, including a complete search of the school which according to cow-towing local media, a sweep of the Lane Middle School for bombs and guns, which turned up nothing.

Gee.  Imaging that.

I recently met Tricia Fields, the Hillerman Award-winning author of The Territory. It is a taut thriller set among drugs and guns along the Texas-Mexico border.  Tricia's day-job is at a small town Indiana school corporation. Good thing she isn't teaching in Maryland or she would be suspended, and the school system would be searched for drugs and guns.

After all, she wrote about that.

But there's more.  Mr. McLaw used "aliases."  In fact, the local newspaper (which should be ashamed of its coverage), began with the lead calling McLaw "a man with many names."

Of course, in the literary world, publishing a book under a different name is referred to as a pen names, or sometimes pseudonym, not an alias.  And it is a common practice for many reasons. Sometimes it is to change gender. Sometimes it is for marketing. Sometimes it is because you are writing something that is outside your profession or your general area in which you write.

Mary Ann Evans could not get published as a woman, so she wrote Silas Marner under the pen name George Elliott.  Stephen King published many books, including some of his best short writing, under the name Richard Bachman.  Of course, perhaps America's greatest novelist was Samuel Clemens, who never published a book under his real name, using the moniker from the riverboat days of his youth - Mark Twain.

The list of pen names is nearly endless.

But so too is the absurdity of small minded people.

Maybe a remedial course in fundamental civil liberties might be in order in eastern Maryland.

Oh, Canada! WTF? Writers Face Substantial Fines for Exposing People to "Vilification"

Political correctness is now the law of the land in Canada.

In a decision that has left me flabbergasted, the Supreme Court of Canada has imposed a legal "political correctness" test on speech and writing.  Cross the line and writers will face substantial fines.

In  Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v. William Whatcott, the Canadian Supreme Court upheld fines issues against fervant anti-homosexual pastor Bill Whatcott for his flyer "Sodomites In Our Schools."

The Canadian Court apparently tried to strike a middle ground.  It struck from the Saskatchewan ordinance the provision that made it impermissible to make a statement that "ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity“ of a person on prohibited grounds of discrimination.  But the Court said that a statement could be punished if "a reasonable person, aware of the context and circumstances, would view the expression as likely to expose a person or persons to detestation and vilification on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

The Court held that a prohibition of any statement “that exposes or tends to expose to hatred” any person or class of persons on the basis of a prohibited ground is a "reasonable limit and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

Truth is not a defense.  The statement can be true, but if it subjects the person to "detestation and vilification," it can be punished as improper speech.

For most American, the idea that pure speech can be punished simply because someone doesn't like it is an anathema to the very concept of freedom.   I would have thought Canadians shared this fundamental understanding of freedom.  But apparently not.

It is ironic that the Canadian decision comes on the 25th Anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, the case that established that writers cannot be liable for  inflicting emotional distress on the subject of their articles, even when intentionally done.

The Hustler v. Falwell case is the subject of my next post.

Oh, Canada! WTF? Canadian Supreme Court Strikes Down Free Speech - Really!

In what most writers would view as a stunning decision, the Canadian Supreme Court in a 6-0 decision held that speech that "exposes or tends to expose" a person, class or group of persons to hatred canned be banned and punished.

Really.

And what is even more inexplicable, the Canadian press and many commentators seem to be perfectly fine with the decision.

In short, the decision holds that in Canada, if your words could reasonably be found to expose a person to "detestation and vilification" on grounds protected from discrimination, you can face substantial fines and punishment.

In the case of  Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v. William Whatcott, the Canadian Supreme Court upheld fines issues against a fervant anti-homosexual pastor.  Bill Whatcott  is known for his missives about the evil of homosexuality and abortion, and his campaign to criminalize homosexual acts in Canada.

Whatcott travelled around Canada speaking and distributing flyers containing incendiary language directed at gays and lesbians.  The flyers at issue were  "Sodomites in Our Schools" and "Keep Homosexuality out of Saskatoon's Public Schools!" 

The flyers refer to homosexuals as sodomites. Whatcott writes that our children are in danger of everlasting damnation if gays are not stopped from making homosexual activity acceptable in our society. 

Whatcott was fined $17,000 by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission on the basis that his flyers exposed homosexuals to hatred.  He was not charged with any act --  for assault, for trespass, or even for disturbing the peace.

He was charged and fined for what he wrote.

More on this decision in my next post.

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photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ksawyer/4696686790/">K. Sawyer Photography</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>

Well I'll be f%#$d ! Supreme Court Strikes Down "Fleeting Expletive" Rule

Holy s%*# !

 The U.S. Supreme Court in a rare unanimous opinion struck down hefty fines imposed by the FCC against ABC and Fox for "fleeting expletives."

The case, which has been bouncing between the FCC and the courts since 2004, evolved from three episodes:

1.  Nicole Richie dropped a couple of expletives on the live 2003 Billboard Music Award, stating: "Have you ever tried to get cowshit out of a Prada purse? It's not so fucking simple."

2.  Cher responded to her critics on a live music awards show by saying "Well fuck 'em."

3.  And then there was the image emblazoned on America's eyeballs and psyche -- pudgy middle-aged Dennis Franz showing his bare backside for 7 seconds on NYPD Blue.

The Court decided the case by an 8-0 vote, unusual in this day of divisive 5-4 decisions. New Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not participate since she served on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals when it considered the same case.

The Court struck down the FCC's actions on a very limited basis. that is the failure of the FCC to give sufficient notice of what conduct was prohibited, and therefore the FCC fines violated due process.  But the Court passed on the "hot potato" issue of whether the FCC can regulate content at all without violating the First Amendment.

Of some interest, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a concurring opinion which stated that the First Amendment prohibited the FCC from regulating profanity.  This is the same position that Justice Clarence Thomas took in a concurring opinion in a previous appeal.

So fleeting expletives are safe - for now.  Makes you wonder what the f#*king acceptance speeches at the Grammys and Academy Awards will be like this year. Don't know about you, but  I'm gonna be watching those motherf*#@ers !


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Banned Books Week: Missouri School Celebrates by Banning Slaughterhouse Five

 CELEBRATE BANNED BOOK WEEK - SEPT 30 to OCT. 6

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READ A BANNED BOOK

It seems the Republic, MO school district has a different idea about the meaning of Banned Books Week.  To celebrate, it decided to ban two books. (For news coverage, click here)

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut's classic of time travel and the horrors of war, is rated as number 18 in Modern Library's  top 100 novels of the 20th Century (click here) and is listed in Time Magazine's 100 greatest English language novels since 1923 (Click here for list).

It is also being banned by the school board in Republic, Missouri, along with Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer, a book that explores teenage relationships and sexuality.  Only one of the four school board members had read either book.

Banned Books Week - September 30-October 5 - is sponsored by the American Library Association.  It celebrates the freedom to read and the dangers of those who want to control what we can read. 

Wesley Scroggins, a Missouri State University business professor, took it upon himself to rally opposition to Slaughterhouse Five because it contained (in his opinion) too many curse words and was unchristian.  "How can Christian men and women expose children to such immorality?" Scroggins wrote in a local newspaper column.

Slaughterhouse Five remains on the list of most frequently targeted banned books.  The American Library Association has prepared a list of the top targeted books by decade. For the past decade, the most targeted books?  Harry Potter.  

Among the other most-targeted books:  J.D. Sallinger's Catcher in the Rye, Maya Angelo's Now I Know Why Caged Birds Sing, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Judy Blume's Forever, and still Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

For the complete list of most banned books in the past decade, click here.