Comments for Victories Made Bitter at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 8 out of 8 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 19 May 2013 23:57:56 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15974 K Allen is simply wrong on the posture of SBA List from the beginning. We ran ads consistent with arguments coming from the Church, all pro life groups, the GOP, and legal scholars who agreed that without a statute prohibiting abortion funding, we will have it at taxpayer expense. Over 1 million dollars of legal expenses later, it is absurd to suggest that we went trolling for a legal battle. We were sued under the Ohio election law, and then we counter-sued on First Amendment grounds. Then post action, Dreihaus dropped the suit but pressed on with a libel suit. We fought this throughout the election season. I suspect that reaches to Mr Allen and his colleagues' purpose. We spent a tremendous amount of time and resources fighting to defend free speech, undernining our ability to exercise it fully in the 2012 Election. Mr. Allen makes a novel, absurd argument and further obscures the fact of Dreihaus offensive vote and of anyone's right to disagree with it. His constituents settled it. - M Dannenfelser Wed, 27 Feb 2013 03:51:09 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15806 I am pleased that Prof. Arkes does not dispute the fact that it was the SBA which introduced the “predicate” of its lying to the lawsuit. That’s a fact hard to refute, as the SBA cited over a dozen cases where blatantly false accusations were ruled to be not actionable as a matter of law. In other words, the SBA promoted the very argument Prof. Arkes slams Judge Black for considering. On the “obtuse” front, I admit that I am not nearly as sharp a thinker, nor as articulate, as Prof. Arkes, so I must plead guilty by default. Still, I contend, not that Prof. Arkes’ analysis is wrong, but that, as I said in my first post, his take on the SBA lawsuit is misleading and unfair to the judge he attacks. I agree with Prof. Arkes to the extent that the judge’s references to the Phelps and Alvarez decisions were unnecessary. But Judge Black did not suggest that the SBA’s members are thugs or liars; Phelps and Alvarez were quoted for their strong free-speech holdings. Nor does Judge Black’s opinion in any way demean or denigrate the pro-life position. Indeed, it does not even describe, much less malign, the SBA’s statements against Driehaus. Driehaus’ claim against the SBA was for defamation. The SBA accused him of voting for publicly funded abortions; Driehaus argued that those accusations wrongfully damaged him. Defamation, however, requires a statement that attacks the plaintiff’s reputation, and exposes him to public hatred, shame, or contempt. Judge Black ruled that the SBA’s pro-life statements against Driehaus were not defamatory as a matter of law. That is, he ruled that voicing a pro-life view cannot be actionable, that such views are absolutely privileged. To put it another way, the judge’s ruling was the exact opposite of what Prof. Arkes portrays it to be: far from holding that to “criticize a public figure for being favorable to abortion is itself taken as immanently hurtful and hateful,” Judge Black ruled that such criticism is not hurtful or hateful as a matter of law. I would have thought Prof. Arkes would be pleased with the judge’s opinion. I guess that just shows how obtuse I am. - K Allen Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:15:21 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15799 I’m afraid that K Allen has given us a rather tilted reading of the case. The SBA wasn’t running through the landscape, looking for places to launch suits and drain its treasury. It would be best to let Marjorie Dannenfelser explain in detail whether they were launching a preemptive suit, to ward off the threat of an action under the statute in Ohio—or whether they had the impression, most vivid, that they were indeed being sued. As for the meaning of Judge Black’s decision, one has to blind oneself to the very cast of the decision— the move to liken the SBA to the thugs in Phelps and the liars in Alvarez—in order to miss the point that Judge Black was making. There is a danger of falling into obtuseness if one fails to see the strands that connect the writing of Judge Black to the writing of judges in other cases—e.g., the assumption settling in that abortion is deeply rightful, that anyone who opposes abortion must be deeply wrong, animated by a blind, religious, and therefore irrational prejudice, which reduces finally to an unreasoning hatred. These strands have been quite visibly at work now, shaping the opinions of the judges, and quite clearly distorting their understanding and, very likely, their character. It is not a sign of realism or wise detachment to pretend that the judges are not exactly saying what people in their circle readily understand that they are saying. - Hadley Arkes Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:15:50 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15798 "Judge Timothy Black in Ohio, a former president of Cincinnati Planned Parenthood," Was there no basis for a motion to have the judge recuse himself based on conflict of interest? - Aelric Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:29:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15797 Prof. Arkes' analysis is insightful, but slightly misleading and unfair to the judge. First, SBA sued Driehaus - not the other way around - along with certain Ohio officials, trying to stop the Ohio Elections Commission from determining whether SBA's adds were false. In this effort, SBA was joined by the ACLU of Ohio. The court denied SBA's request to enjoin the Ohio officials. Driehaus did counterclaim against SBA for defamation. In moving to have the case dismissed, SBA argued that "[b]ecause respect for diversity of opinion is a fundamental value of American democracy, it is simply not actionable, as a matter of law, to impute mainstream political ideas or political acts — even falsely — to political candidates or public officials." Contrary to Prof. Arkes' view, the judge did not "install the predicate that the SBA was in fact 'lying.'" The SBA itself installed that predicate. Things are not as dire as Prof. Arkes suggests. Certainly, the judge never said that "criticiz[ing] a public figure for being favorable to abortion is . . . immanently hurtful and hateful," nor can his ruling fairly be read as suggesting such. - K Allen Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:36:36 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15794 Which is why Catholic reliance upon the legal system has been so misbegotten. - Dennis Tue, 12 Feb 2013 03:30:45 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15793 Always remember, Dr.Arkes, that we are not alone. We live in a world created by God Who is allowing all of these things to happen. The Blessed Mother has warned for centuries of a great chastisement which would include "diabolical disorientation" to occur. Satan and his minions would be loosed on the earth because Man had turned from worshipping God to worshipping Man. Does anyone seriously think that we are going to get away with aborting 55 million of God's creatures? Does anyone think we are going to get away with legalizing what God has called forever an "abomination"(aberrosexual 'marriage')? The Pope has just abdicated and there is no leader to replace him in sight. The Church is in a "civil war". Secular Americans are arming themselves to the teeth in anticipation of massive oppression by the central government. The answer was numbers. If enough people had converted and amended their lives, the catastrophy could have been averted. Christ asked that France submit and dedicate the nation to His Sacred Heart. This was not done and one hundred years later, France experienced the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, as well as a secular government ever since. Now it is our turn. - Manfred Tue, 12 Feb 2013 03:07:27 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2013/victories-made-bitter.html#comment-15792 This kind of thing only matters if you believe in the secularist Gomorrah people call America.. Lucky for us, the judges and politicians can make all the silly pronouncements they want and Christ is still king of the universe! - Jacob R Tue, 12 Feb 2013 03:07:25 +0100