Free Speech, Pornography, Rape, and Cranberry Jelly

Neil Gaiman wrote a wonderful piece about the importance of free speech. He is an outspoken supporter of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Here's an excerpt from his post, but the entire thing is worth reading.

If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said.

The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made.

In his post, he links to another fascinating article that postulates a correlation between the decline in rapes per capita over the last 30 years with increased access to porn (caused by the rise of video tape and the internet).

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And lest you think Neil's blog is all serious commentary on issues of the day, he also posts a lovey recipe for Cranberry Jelly that I shall have to try.