California [HT:SN]
A supporter of Proposition 8, fed up with what he believed was the gay community's and "liberal media's" refusal to accept the voters' verdict, fired off a letter to the editor.
"Please show respect for democracy," he wrote, in a letter we published.What he encountered instead was an utter lack of respect for free speech.
Within hours, the intimidation game was on. Because his real name and city were listed - a condition for publication of letters to The Chronicle - opponents of Prop. 8 used Internet search engines to find the letter writer's small business, his Web site (which included the names of his children and dog), his phone number and his clients. And they posted that information in the "Comments" section of SFGate.com - urging, in ugly language, retribution against the author's business and its identified clients... [snip]
"They're intimidating people that don't have the same beliefs as they do ... so they'll be silenced," ... "It doesn't bode well for the free-speech process. People are going to have to be pretty damn courageous to speak up about anything. Why would anyone want to go through this?"
[A: for the sake of our children, and the country they inherit. We must insist that 'tolerance' of ideas - even those we disagree with - remain inviolate. Not trying to be the drama queen here, but I fear we're rapidly approaching an era of serious threats to our civil liberties - freedom of speech chief among them, it's not a given - we'll need defend it.]
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