No. 71, Summer 1999

by Joan Kennedy Taylor

In the last issue of ALF News I offered my own take on the proportionately small number of women who are attracted to libertarianism, and suggested that a bias against women’s issues might be keeping libertarians (particularly libertarian men) from reaching out to their natural allies among individualist feminists. Totally coincidentally, I have recently heard from an individualist feminist woman and a libertarian man, neither of whom had read that article, who sent me short articles that they thought I might be interested in publishing.

I am delighted to do so here, to prove that indeed there is libertarian thinking among feminists, and feminist thinking among libertarians. The issues discussed, censorship and abortion, are among the most important legal issues of the day, and ALF News intends to discuss them further as we enter the new millennium.

Sandy Rapp is a feminist singer and the author of a book on lesbian/gay civil rights called God’s Country: A Case Against Theocracy. She is also, like myself, a founding member of Feminists for Free Expression, a Manhattan-based national non-profit organization. She has composed a memorial to anti-gay victims which she is currently performing entitled "The Flag and the Rainbow," which will be released in 2000 on a CD entitled "Sixties Rollin’ On." On December 10 she will be performing at the NOW-NY State Conference in Saratoga, NY. Her article here is an update of an article that ran in several gay publications across the country, including Gay Today and Southern Voice.

The unconstitutionality of the COPA that she discusses here will be argued before a three-judge panel on November 4 in Philadelphia by ACLU national staff attorney Ann Beeson, who is also a board member and the chair of the legal committee of Feminists for Free Expression. The free speech community also sent at the end of September a letter to the House and Senate conferees on the juvenile justice bill, objecting to that section of the bill that mandates that schools and libraries that receive federal funds to help them connect to the Internet must use filtering and blocking software to regulate Internet access by minors. One of the issues that we must grapple with is the change that has taken place in much of the language justifying censorship. No longer is the main thrust of it the protection of women—now it is the protection of children. Sandy Rapp has made a start in connecting the importance of gay role models for teens to the lives of the adults they will someday become. In what other ways can feminists connect their rejection of censorship on behalf of children to their feminism without acquiescing in the definition of women as primarily mothers that has been so problematical for women in the past?

Bob Goodwyn is a member of the California Libertarian Party who says that he has not yet found much support within the LP for the specific ideas advocated here. But he is not the only person to see interesting possibilities in the changes of technology that are having strong impact on thinking about abortion. Victor Koman has written a science fiction book entitled Solomon’s Knife that discusses the possibility of fetal transplants (which Goodwyn briefly implies in his speculation about the future) and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor herself has said that the landmark Roe v. Wade decision dividing the legal treatment of abortion into trimesters is "on a collision course with itself" because the end of the second trimester of pregnancy no longer coincides with fetal viability. Abortion is the only subject on which ALF has taken an official position, which it took on October 20, 1977, as follows:

Obviously, we do not want to change the import of this statement. But do the changes in technology that have occurred since it was adopted lead us to want to amplify it in any way, not legally but socially?

May these pieces mark the beginning of much fruitful dialogue on these vital concerns.

by Sandy Rapp

There they go again. In 1997 the United States Supreme Court’s Reno v. ACLU (96-511) unanimously rejected a key provision of the Communications Decency Act. This decision sided with the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the AIDS Education Global Information in their arguments that it is both unwise and unconstitutional to sanitize from the Internet all information conservatives deem unfit for minors.

But as soon as the ink dried on this historic free speech decision, Ohio Republican Congressman Michael Oxley redrafted the same bill as the Child Online Protection Act, now signed into law as part of the federal budget. This piece of work, currently under a federal judge’s temporary restraining order and facing court challenge by groups from obstetricians to booksellers, amorphously criminalizes Internet transmission of all materials "harmful to minors." The strategy is to cast, under pretext of "protecting" minors, all opponents of government censorship as "pro-child pornographers." But, needless to say, the use of minors in pornographic materials is already very illegal. And, as the American Civil Liberties Union argues in its current battle, called ACLU v. Reno II, the COP Act clearly "imposes a burden on speech that is protected for adults."

The dangers of censorship have spoken loudly for themselves throughout our country’s history. The Comstock Act of 1873 repressed all sex education, birth control, and abortion information as "indecent." How many women died of back-street abortions induced by the repression of accurate reproductive information?

Concurrently, such measures have served as the primary means for oppressing gay people. One of the many things from which such censorship of the world’s largest library "protects" children is gay-positive role models. As it happens the lesbian and gay-male community is itself considered "indecent" by many conservatives, a phenomenon responsible for a history of gay invisibility, barely penetrated now even with all today’s "outings." This particular silence keeps lesbian and gay-male youth isolated and unaware of current psychological and medical information that would assure them their orientation is neither a disorder nor an illness.

This silence, wrought by repressions official and otherwise, does indeed kill. Silence-induced ignorance about sexual orientation manifests in a gay youth suicide rate that is three times higher than the non-gay incidence. Other fatalities proceed from the repression of gay-related AIDS education. Nationally, of course, there are many thousands of Americans dead from lack of effective, explicit, i.e., gay-specific, HIV education.

The people drafting these unconstitutional censorship measures know how the Internet works. They know that anyone can get anything they want and that to restrict for children also restricts for adults. Their goal is to restrict for adults. The conservatives want a return to the Comstock days of no birth control, no abortion, and theatre "padlocks" closing down all shows with gay-related themes.

Existing software screening makes it possible for parents to control viewing, absent censorship laws. And what this software screens out well illustrates the danger of placing similar tools in government hands. A column in the National Organization for Women’s March 1997 National NOW Times reported: "NOW’s Website has been blocked for the past year to users of one product, Cybersitter, made by Solid Oak Software." NOW Times goes on, "According to the Solid Oak president, NOW’s site is blocked because of content supporting lesbian and gay rights. Solid Oak states on its Website that it blocks ‘homosexuality/transgender sites.’"

Some would very much like to have seen Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s report on President Bill Clinton’s extra-curricular activities not published. They think it was downright un-American. But, it could not be legally restricted without also restricting the speech of Starr’s opponents. Conservatives’ focus on the tiny percent of explicit Internet material loosely classified as "pornography" is endangering the primary means, i.e., free expression, through which any civil liberties have ever been obtained. Let’s hope the Court continues to protect Americans from the Congressional conservatives and their Child Online Protection Act.

by Bob Goodwyn

I find cause for concern regarding the number of "Libertarians" who are anti-choice on abortion. I find even more concern about the shyness of Libertarians to voice their pro-choice opinions. Sounds like time for me to do some writing! This is especially true since I find the mainstream pro-choice position philosophically off-target.

I should not have to say this, but to alleviate any doubt: I do not like abortion. Much like my position on drugs, I like to see people decide not to do it; but I know that my authority, and the government’s, should go no further.

First, I must lay this "Right to Life" business to rest. Setting aside my sentiment for Jefferson’s eloquence, I recognize no more right to life than a right to the pursuit of happiness. As a Libertarian, I hold with liberty; that means that the right to be free from aggression and fraud covers all of the living to which one is entitled. My target audience should be low enough in the Nielsen ratings to understand that this does not mean murder.

I like life. I am all for a right to life where it does not conflict with liberty. Let’s assume that we have liberty (sadly, hypothetical, but not far-fetched). Given all instances in which the "Right to Life" does not conflict with the "Right to Liberty," the "Right to Life" is superfluous. Both rights protect the same actions. There is no argument when the two do not conflict. Where they do conflict, and you must choose one or the other, is the point of concern, and that is the focus of my discussion.

By way of example, let’s say I’m dying. I’m in the hospital with some disease or just plain old age. It is probably the case that more money spent on my care could keep me alive another month. If I have a right to live, then I have the right to tax you for that money; you are obligated to pay for my care. And, being a right, it is not subject to effects of scale. If I need a million dollars to keep me alive one more day, then you pay one million dollars. My life take precedence over your liberty.

This illustrates that when the "Right to Life" is chosen over the "Right to Liberty," it is not a right to live at all. It is a right to force other people to keep you alive. The term "Right to Life" is a euphemism.

There are a couple of other little problems with a right to life. For one thing, if you have the right to force people to keep you alive, it becomes more difficult to refute their claim to tell you how to live; e.g,: what to eat, what drugs not to take, etc. This progresses toward the unavoidable, and very awkward, corollary of giving them the right to force you to stay alive.

Also, since the violation of liberty would most likely be a matter of government coercion, there is the universally understood—but never spoken—stratagem that exists when the government initiates a threat. It goes like this: "If you choose not to comply you will go to jail; if you choose not to go to jail, the police are free to kill you." The phrase "initiate the use of force" makes no exclusion of deadly force; if the game is played to win, deadly force is implied. I am not stretching the point when I say that your "Right to Life" conflicts with someone else’s "Right to Life." Any violation of liberty is a threat to life.

In summing up the "Right to Life," it becomes apparent that people who give the "Right to Life" priority over liberty are not Libertarians. They are "Lifearians," who like liberty where it does not conflict with life.

Guaranteeing immortality goes a long way when dealing with the general population. They are creatures of denial. It is not unusual to hear a politician promise "Cradle to grave protection" against death and receive rounds of applause. In the end, any claim of a right to life becomes a joke.

Now, let’s move on to abortion.

Where I see both sides of the abortion debate missing the point is that it is not a question of a right to live, but a question of the right to the use of the mother’s body. To compel a woman to take a pregnancy to term is to force her to keep someone else alive. It is involuntary servitude, to put it mildly.

I make the comparison to the owner of a building having the right to evict a tenant. If it happens that the tenant cannot live without the landlord’s aid, it does not change the landlord’s right to evict; the landlord is not a murderer if he carries out the eviction. There is no duty to keep the unwelcome tenant alive.

I reiterate what I said early on, that abortion brings me no pleasure. I look forward to some someday when technology and standard of living might make the question of abortion obsolete. I like to imagine a kindly doctor saying to a young lady, "Yes, you’re pregnant. If you don’t want the baby, you can take it to term and put it up for adoption; or we can take it out now and put it up for adoption. The adoptive parents will pay for the procedure." When that day arrives, I might look upon the death of a fetus as murder. But that day is not here yet. Until then, I think that a woman should have at least as much authority over her own body as she would have over an apartment building.

I hope you do not find it unfair of me to close with a pragmatic note: prohibition of abortion has been tried, and it was almost as conspicuous a failure as the prohibition of alcohol. The results of having abortion illegal were literally atrocious. It is something that only a misguided zealot would want to go back to.

I read your marvelous article on women and the libertarian movement and was cheering you on from start to finish! Well done!

I loved your piece in the latest ALF on why there are so few women in the movement. I particularly resonated with your point about how many men do not realize how hostile their comments/attitudes toward women are and, so, feel a sense of injured innocence when their unwittingly offensive behaviour is pointed out as such. That’s happened to me more times than I can recount in one sitting, and it is so frustrating. A man approaches you and says, "What’s a woman with a good body doing talking about theory," you respond by grimacing, and the ground immediately shifts to whether you are too ‘sensitive’ to know when you are being paid a compliment. So—not only are you not supposed to be talking theory, but you are also psychologically impaired. And all this is supposed to be flattering. Surrealism in everyday life.

Wendy McElroy is the editor of a new individualist feminist site on free-market.net. The site is called ifeminists.com. She asks us to announce this URL http://www.ifeminists.com/interaction/index.html#browse in particular, as it "leads to an e-mail directory of individualist feminists on-line—a free service which I would like to invite every single member of ALF to join in order to help cement the community that ALF has established."ALF member Sieglinde Kress took on the job of summarizing all the proposed revisions to the 76 chapters of the New York City Charter at the September meeting of the Libertarian Party of Queens County in New York City, leading to what was called by LPQC Chair Jim Strawhorn "the most informative public discussion of the proposed revisions to the New York City Charter to be held anywhere this year." The recommendations of the Charter Revision Commission were designed to appear as a comprehensive proposal on the November 2, 1999 ballot.

Karen Michalson’s Enemy Glory, originally bought by Tor Books at the turn of 1999 as a trilogy, is now to be published as a projected dark fantasy series. The first book (which itself may or may not be called Enemy Glory) is tentatively scheduled to appear in August/September 2000. Karen is the bassist-vocalist for the progressive rock band Point of Ares, and she first drew attention to her fiction by basing the band’s first album on Enemy Glory. The CDs of Point of Ares are available through Arula Records, which can be e-mailed at arularec@aol.com.