Not so silenced

The author below has a point. After the initial attempts by the mass media and social media to ignore and censor the Barrington declarers, they did get a lot of attention elswhere.

Attempts to censor something often make it more widely heard. It can generate interest. It can be good publicity. But the fact remains that the mainstream media did give the Barrington group short shrift initially. And given the notable academic authority of the declarers that strongly suggests a political motivation. It suggests that there was a Covid orthodoxy that was not open to challenge

Supporters and opponents of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) are unlikely to agree on many things. I hope one area of agreement may be the following: The authors of the GBD are not invisible, muffled mystery men and women. People who pay attention to COVID-19 policy know their names, and we know what they believe.

In fact, these individuals are rather omnipresent figures in the COVID-19 media landscape. They have been on many large podcasts. They have given many TV interviews. They have been interviewed by and written many editorials in large newspapers. They’ve been profiled by The New York Times and Medpage Today. They have a large presence on social media. They have made a truly remarkable number of YouTube videos (Dr. Jay Bahattacharya, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Dr. Marin Kulldorff), some of which have been seen by millions of people. They have testified before Congress and in courts regarding COVID-19 policy. Some have gained new funding sources or found new employment in right-wing think tanks. They’ve met with and influenced powerful politicians, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. They held a “medical experts roundtable” at President Trump’s White House. Dr. Gupta met with and influenced UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Journalists rightly say they’ve become “famous voices” this pandemic.

Like I said, we know who the authors of the GBD are, and we know what they believe. Most importantly, we know how they’ve shaped our COVID-19 response.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/muzzled/

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Does free speech fly at Boston City Hall Plaza?

by Jeff Jacoby

NEXT WEEK the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Shurtleff v. Boston, a freedom-of-speech case that concerns a flagpole on Boston's City Hall Plaza.
The facts of the controversy are simple. The issues at stake are profound.

There are actually three flagpoles in front of City Hall. One always flies the American flag. The second is reserved for the flag of Massachusetts. The third pole is handled differently.

Ordinarily, the City of Boston flag flies from the third flagpole. But City Hall has a longstanding policy of letting private groups raise some other flag on that pole, typically in conjunction with an event taking place on the plaza below. Between June 2005 and July 2017, the city received 284 applications from various community, civic, or social organizations wishing to hold flag-raising ceremonies. Every one of them was approved.

Over the course of those 12 years, the banners of scores of countries and causes were temporarily flown from the third pole. Among them were the flags of Mexico, China, Brazil, and Puerto Rico, the LGBT Pride flag, the Juneteenth flag, and banners heralding Marcus Garvey Day, the Walk for Peace, and the Bunker Hill Association. Boston's published guidelines referred to City Hall Plaza and the third flagpole as "public forums" and said the city "seeks to accommodate all applicants." On its website, the city affirmed that its intention was to provide access to all groups: "We commemorate flags from many countries and communities at Boston City Hall Plaza. We want to create an environment in the city where everyone feels included."

In short, the City of Boston proclaimed a policy of unfettered free speech on the plaza and the third flagpole, and it upheld that policy without fail.

Until this case.

In 2017, Boston resident Hal Shurtleff and his Christian civic organization, Camp Constitution, applied for permission to hold a one-hour ceremony on City Hall Plaza to mark Constitution Day on Sept. 17, a federal observance of the day the US Constitution was signed, in 1787. They planned to raise a flag featuring a Christian cross in the upper left corner, as part of a program celebrating the Constitution and spotlighting the contribution of the nation's Christian Founders.

The city said no. For the first time ever, it refused to allow a private group to raise its flag — and it did so for one reason only: because Shurtleff's application had described Camp Constitution's banner as a "Christian" flag. Gregory Rooney, the City Hall commissioner who turned Shurtleff down, claimed that Boston had a policy of "refraining from flying non-secular flags on the City Hall flagpoles" — i.e., "a religious flag that was promoting a specific religion." But no such policy had ever been previously articulated. And Rooney later testified that it was solely the appearance of the word "Christian" on the application that triggered the city's rejection. There would have been no objection to Camp Constitution's proposed flag-raising if the flag had been described differently.

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/25933/does-free-speech-fly-at-city-hall-plaza

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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