The Christian Right lost — for now — a second battle today when U.S. District Court Judge James Ware denied the groups’ demand that the government force trial participants to surrender video footage of the trial in which California’s antigay, antifamily Proposition 8 was overturned. (Read More)

As P.Z. Myers says, here’s a pretty good reason not to attend a religious university.  A Mormon student at Brigham Young wrote a letter to the school’s newspaper addressing the LDS’s positions on Prop 8 and gay rights, which was published for a hot minute before the paper decided to censor the student and pull the letter:

Yesterday, Brigham Young University’s student paper The Daily Universe featured a letter to the editor that argued that the legal case for Proposition 8 is “indefensible.” Its author, BYU student Cary Crall, also asked Mormons to admit that their only opposition to gay marriage is religious. The letter attracted enormous attention and praise from both the Mormon and ex-Mormon online communities. People were most impressed that BYU—in a refreshing display of academic freedom—published it.

But shortly after the letter was posted to the Universe‘s website, it was quietly pulled. This is disappointing, but not terribly surprising; the letter nearly didn’t get published at all. Crall told me in a Facebook message that he submitted the letter to the Universe a few weeks ago, but it was rejected by the summer editor who felt it was inappropriate for a “newspaper funded by the LDS Church.” It wasn’t until after some edits and the approval of a new editor that it was published, albeit briefly.

If you click the above link, the letter is posted in its entirety, and it’s probably getting more attention than ever for being censored, so that’s good. Here’s a key passage:

It is time for LDS supporters of Prop 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment. It’s not about adoption rights, or the first amendment, or tradition. These arguments were not found worthy of the standards for finding facts set up by our judicial system. The real reason is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment. [This is a privately held religious belief that we are using to support legislation that takes away a right from a minority group. If our government were to enact legislation based solely on such beliefs, it would set a dangerous precedent, possibly even more so than allowing a homosexual to marry the person he or she loves.] We must be honest about our motivation, and consider what it means to the delicate balance between our relationship with God and with His children here on earth. Maybe then we will stop thoughtlessly spouting arguments that are offensive to gays and lesbians and indefensible to those not of our faith.

I tend to agree with P.Z.’s assessment — the letter is just a tad bit too honest for the Mormon church.

Last month, the Burlington County, New Jersey, public library director Gail Sweet — acting in violation of library guidelines – censored the book Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology. She acted in collaboration with Christian Rightists who had succeeded in censoring the same book at Rancocas Valley Regional High School in May. Both actions were effected solely on the basis of antigay bigotry; in the view of the censors, all literature relating to youth and sexual orientation constitutes “child pornography.” Anti-censorship, free-speech, and pro-equality advocates mounted an ongoing resistance campaign.

Today, a few weeks later, the Cookeville Herald Citizen in Tennessee reported that the Alliance Defense Fund and local evangelical author Ilene Vick are suing the Putnam County Library for prohibiting the use of a public room by her evangelical book club.

The newspaper cites the library’s policies for room use:

* Library activities have priority over any outside pre-arranged or regularly scheduled groups or events.

* Bookings for meeting rooms are to be arranged through the reference librarian no less than 24 hours before the meeting.

* Meeting rooms are available for public gatherings of a civic, cultural or educational character. Rooms are not available for meetings of social, political, partisan or religious purposes; for the benefit of private individuals or commercial concerns; for the presentation of one side of controversial matters; or when in the judgment of the Library Board, disorder may be likely to occur.

* The rooms may be used by joint committees or associations from more than one church for business, educational, and cultural transactions when no religious services are involved.

Christian Right media outfit OneNewsNow joined the ADF in asserting that Christian Rightists enjoy a special right to bypass any usage restrictions and to evangelize wherever they please.

Should an atheist, Buddhist feminist, Jewish environmentalist, or gay conservative author seek to use the Putnam County library’s meeting room, I’m betting that ADF, OneNewsNow, and all of their friends will threaten the author — not the library. Censorship is great — until you’re not the one being denied access to the public.

In a report that holds grave implications for liberal writers seeking to preserve freedom and equality, Ole Ole Olson writes on Alternet today about a massive right-wing campaign to suppress free speech within the blog-search and social-media hub Digg.

Bloggers and other online writers use Digg to publicize their articles by topic to a broad online audience. Articles are voted up or down by readers, and articles with the most votes reach the most Digg users.

According to Alternet, a network of authoritarian conservative members of Digg conspired for over a year to manipulate votes and broadly bury articles that were submitted to Digg by supposed liberals.

Olson explains:

One bury brigade in particular is a conservative group that has become so organized and influential that they are able to bury over 90% of the articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours, regardless of subject material. Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section (where it is usually at for ~24 hours) and cannot reach the front page, so by doing this, this one group is removing the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content). This group is known as the Digg “Patriots”.

Olson provides the usernames of more than 100 member Patriots, links to recent articles that were suppressed, and the usernames of the most common targets of suppression.

By suppressing liberal speech, the network sought to leave Digg users with fewer alternatives to the conservative propaganda of the GOP, Tea Party, and Big Oil (BP in particular).

Olson says the Patriots have been using Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook to coordinate their efforts to suppress liberal speech.

On the Exodus blog, Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas earlier this week defended “Pastor” David Manning, after YouTube removed Manning’s video for inciting antigay violence, encouraging blind hatred of LGBT customers of YouTube, and violating YouTube’s terms of service.

In addition to promoting hate-based violence against LGBT people, Manning encouraged a government shutdown of all non-fundamentalist media (including, presumably, YouTube).

Thomas falsely claims that U.S. constitutional protection of free speech applies to private properties such as YouTube.

Manning, Thomas, and ex-gay activist McKrae Game also falsely blame the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act for the removal, ignoring YouTube’s terms of service. That federal law only applies to sentencing following conviction for felony acts of violence.

Game added ominously, “The statement that Hate Crimes legislation was passed supposedly to protect not just homosexuals but people of faith is extremely questionable.” That, too, is a lie: The legislation was an add-on to existing law that already offers full protection to persons of faith who are subjected to felony violence. The add-on legislation reiterated that no part of the law may be used to inhibit speech.

Lies, incitement to violence, and censorship: Exodus becomes ever-more anti-Christian, indecent, apostate, and selfish in the methods with which it “equips” its Exodus Church Network to violate LGBT Americans’ lives and undermine public morality.

Meanwhile, for better or worse, it’s a free country — and YouTube can host or remove whatever it pleases.

In response to the American Library Association’s commemoration of Banned Books Week, Focus on the Family is encouraging antigay and antiabortion activists to overwhelm public libraries with stacks of donated conservative books.

Focus complains that the ALA’s campaign in defense of free speech and access to ideas “showcases books to which parents have objected ‚Äî and which libraries have generally not pulled from shelves.”

“Every year, the ALA and other liberal groups use this trumped-up event to intimidate and basically silence concerned parents,” said Candi Cushman, education analyst for Focus on the Family Action.

Cushman defends “silenced” parents’ efforts to ban such “liberal” books as:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell

But those efforts have stalled, so Focus tries to buy time:

Cushman said it’s time for families to turn the tables and challenge the ALA to honor its own principles.

“You can do this most effectively by simply going to your local public library, or a school library,” she said, “and donating books that communicate your family’s perspective on those issues.”

While Focus continues its low-key campaign to ban American literature, meantime our nation’s libraries can look forward to receiving hordes of freshly bound, barely read copies of classic works by the greats: Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Randall Terry, and John Paulk.

“True Tolerance,” a campaign of Focus on the Family that enjoys promotional support from Exodus International, may be having an impact upon public schools:

As many as 107 Tennessee public school districts recently began blocking student access to gay health, science, family, and education resources. Instead, students who seek accurate information are being confined to ex-gay resources that have been rejected as inaccurate and harmful by professional medical and mental-health organizations.

Banned resources include:

• Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
• The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
• Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
• Marriage Equality USA
• Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry
• The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
• Dignity USA (an organization for LGBT Catholics)

“True Tolerance” is an antigay response to the Day of Silence, GLSEN’s national campaign to discourage violence in public schools. The antigay project espouses tolerance of outspoken on-campus activism by antigay Christians — and intolerance of those who oppose antigay violence or who disagree with discredited ex-gay propaganda. Without offering evidence, “True Tolerance” accuses antiviolence advocates of waging a “monopoly” and a “pro-gay agenda.”

The campaign does not claim responsibility for Internet restrictions in Tennessee specifically, but the web site encourages antigay activists to pressure schools to silence the allegedly “unbalanced” messages of the antiviolence crowd and to silence “vulnerable children” (teen-agers) who seek to be honest about their sexuality.

If pressure tactics don’t work, then True Tolerance lobs legal threats against antiviolence efforts. First, the campaign warns against schools’ fears of “legal liability for not making their school ‘safe.’” True Tolerance dismisses the simple fact that antigay violence is making schools unsafe, and that parents of bullied youths are suing. Instead, True Tolerance offers to arm antigay activists with unspecified “legally accurate facts” in opposition to mandatory “diversity” policies. It would seem that, in the view of Exodus and Focus, “true tolerance” in schools cannot and should not be diverse enough to include bullied youths, their friends, or their parents.

Official efforts to “protect” mature students from the facts about gay health, science, family issues, and education are having a negative impact on Tennessee schools.

Karyn Storts-Brinks, a librarian at Fulton High School in Knoxville, points out:

Students who need to do research for assignments on current events can only get one viewpoint, keeping them from being able to cover both sides of the issue. That’ not fair and can hinder their schoolwork.

Box Turtle Bulletin reports:

The ACLU is giving the districts until April 29 to come up with a plan to provide access to LGBT sites or any other category that blocks non-sexual websites advocating the fair treatment of LGBT people by the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year.