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                  Editorial for the month of February 1996

                           First Amendment Rights

Once again the Federal Government has tried to legislate morality. It
didn't work during prohibition. In fact all it did was establish an
organized crime ring that still exists today, despite years of attempts to
eradicate it. It hasn't worked in the abortion issue. No matter which side
the legislators land on, there is dissension. And so it goes with the
advent of this ridiculous telecommunications legislation. What people tend
to forget is that the Internet is a global media. People from different
cultures and different societal norms exist in this electronic ooze we call
the Net. As a nation we do get called on from time to time to be the worlds
cops. And as the sole survivor of the cold war, we do have certain bragging
rights. But, that is all that we should have.

We are NOT the world police. We SHOULD NOT be the world police. It seems a
shame that the greatest gathering of the knowledge of our known world,
since the library at Alexandria in the third century BC, now has a black
mark against it. I often wonder what gets into our psyches as Americans
that makes us think that we have a lock on the moralistic bounds of the
world. Might does not make right. We are taught this from the first grade
on. If might did make right then America wouldn't have begun in the first
place.

There are those who will think that I am in favor of all flavors of sexual
predilections. That I don't care what our children see and are exposed to.
Quite the contrary is true. I do care what my child sees. That is why I
work with him to understand what the bounds are for his age. He's eleven. I
don't just abandon him to the keyboard allowing it to become a very cheap
sitter. I am involved in what he sees and learns. By doing this I am
ensuring that when he does move out from under my tutelage he has a good
grounding in what is right and what is wrong based on our combined values.
That is the best any of us can hope for. If this were true for the majority
of the American families, American families wouldn't be in the decrepit
state that they are in now.

This law is unnecessary and uncalled for. As a nation we should rise above
this kind of constitutional preening. If these sights are so depraved, why
are they the most visited sites in the world? If the people that visited
these sites are as depraved as the sites were, what will become of them
now? What has over fifty years of psychological study told us about
repression? This is a good thing? No, I don't think so. I don't claim to
have all of the answers, but I do claim to have a pretty good idea about
the freedoms this country is SUPPOSED to afford it's citizens, and this is
not it.

Come on, wake up America. Let freedom ring.

De Stewart

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