I have to admit that I resigned from FIRE. In part because of a potential conflict, and in part because I think that they are very selective about the cases they take on, and people were not responsive to my concerns. (Also, speachcodes.org doesn’t seem to understand the difference between policy statements of a security director and real “regulations” that the students must follow, but that is another issue.)

FIRE doesn’t seem to care too much about expressions of a sexual nature. In fact, their website specifically explains that obscene speech is not protected. However, they fail to do any more analysis. (This is, in part, due to political issues within the group.) If there is any place where offensive speech can be “tried out” and later determined to have no benefits (or some benefits) it is the college campus, and therefore the student’s right to receive, and create obscene materials must be protected. Yet, somehow FIRE ignores these people and concentrates their efforts on Christian groups who are told that they need to find another room, or the odd creative writing teacher who says something good about Bush. Granted, the Christians and the professors are entitled to protection, but it says something very sad about the state of affairs in FIRE, when they 1) do not care about schools which restrict the access people have to pornography (or ability to produce such pornography); 2) specifically exclude schools which are intellectually honest about suppressing certain ideas.

What is sad about FIRE is that it started off with such good intentions. Harvey Silvergate and Nadine Strossen mean so well. Now it just seems to be dominated by Ed Meese, who claims that he has a commitment to the first amendment, but thinks that the only people it applies to are bible-beaters.