Writing in this blog is hard for me because I have fears that it will trigger some government agency to start watching me. Perhaps they will even concoct false accusations and charges against me.
True... that is just arrogance on my part. I doubt if anyone in the government cares what I say. But it does point to a general feeling that others have expressed to me. We are being silenced. Not by laws directly attacking our free speech but by other laws hemming us in tighter and tighter.
Take for example, the effective laws of political correctness. I have to be careful what I say at work or it might get labeled as sexist or racist and I'll get fired. As long as I've been at work where I work now, there have been stories of people getting fired for "inappropriate remarks" even when they did not offend the person they were made to.
Texas has laws against photography (see section 21.15) which seems to me would be against the first amendment and also arbitrarily vague since it talks about "intent" to arouse "any" person. Yet, there it sits on the books and being prosecuted in various cases.
How am I to know when this law is going to be applied to my photography? And even if I beat the charge, I still have lost huge amounts of time and probably money fighting against the legal system.
Remember the case in New Mexico where a couple declined to photograph a gay wedding and where eventually fined $6,637.94 for not doing something. (For reference, Google: new mexico wedding photography case). and... that something was against their personal beliefs. It seems we can not even act (or not act) according to our own beliefs or we will get punished.
Where are we now? It is like a friend sketched out to me recently. We are huddled inside our homes in fear. The image he referenced is that of pre World War II Germany where most of the people lived in fear of their own government. Their response was to huddle inside their homes and not speak out.
With this in mind, I am going to go ahead and post my next open letter although I have some trepidations about doing so.
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