It's Tuesday, and the fight over Americans' sexuality continues -- as indicated by the controversy brewing over a Planned Parenthood clinic scheduled to be built in Portland, Ore., and reported on by the Oregonian . Pressure from antiabortion activists was so high that the construction company in charge of building the center pulled out of the project. The company's owner, Bob Walsh, said that when he found out the building was going to be used for a Planned Parenthood clinic, he asked contractors from other cities what it was like to deal with aggressive antiabortion activists. They said that the protesters had gone as far as staking out the contractors' homes. "I just didn't want to put my family through that," Walsh told the Oregonian, saying that he didn't have moral objections to the project. Fair enough. I have to say that if I were a building contractor, I wouldn't be particularly excited about walking through a protest every time I tried to get to work. As my mother would say, there are plenty of other buildings in the sea. And as for the protesters, as long as they don't actually do anything threatening, they've a right to free speech, as moronic and disruptive as it may be. Sure, there are days when I wish that the First Amendment included a reference to the golden rule -- a little "Do unto others ..." clause that asked people to consider whether they'd want protesters camped out on their front lawn accusing them of murde ...
Anytime
