In a move designed to strengthen the growing coalition of individuals and organizations working together to fight threatened federal governmental censorship of explicit speech and imagery, the Free Speech Coalition (www.freespeechcoalition.com) has officially joined forces with the east coast based National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (www.ncsfreedom.org), an organization dedicated to advancing equal rights for members of alternative lifestyles within the United States.Primarily focused on the S/M-leather-fetish, swing, and polyamory communities, the NCSF is a complimentary activism and education fit for the FSC, as members of both organizations face many of the same challenges in the political present and future.
Tom Hymes, Communication Director for the Free Speech Coalition, says that the trade organization is “genuinely excited” about the collaboration.
“The NCSF has been around for quite a number of years,” Hymes told YNOT. “They have an extensive membership and they have an enviable outreach program. They’ve been very active in their community, so we’re looking forward to working together with them to develop educational and outreach programs, to help mobilize our base for fundraising campaign and for political campaigns.”
According to Hymes, this is “just the beginning” of partnerships that FSC will enter into with other organizations that promote the rights of consenting adults to free speech.
“It is going to be a hard fought fight,” Hymes warned. “It’s going to take place not only in the halls of Congress, not only in the Supreme Court, but also out in the country, out among the consumers and regular citizens.”
By working together, the FSC hopes to mobilize Americans who may have never felt an interest in politics or seen the need for diverse populations to work together on a common goal. Working together with groups such as the NCSF will make it easier for the various organizations to exchange information, share resources, and show a stronger, unified face to the opposition.
As National Coalition for Sexual Freedom Spokesperson Susan Wright sees it, the decision to join forces is a natural result of actions already in motion.
“We’ve worked together unofficially in the past and now we’re making it official,” said Wright.
Of particular and immediate interest to the NCSF is how the Free Speech Coalition’s 2257 injunction will play out. The group hopes to lend some assistance in the battle against 2257’s potential harm, in part because of the havoc that could ensue for not only consumers and providers of lifestyle-appropriate content, but also for community practitioners.
“When it comes to anything having to do with S/M, cross dressing, transgender… we are kind of on the fringe so we’re going to be the first targets, which is why we have to take an interest in these things,” Wright explained. “We are going to be the first target. It’s not going to be vanilla porn that they use as a test case.”
Although Hymes and Wright work with different organizations located on opposites ends of the continent, they see a common adversary in threatened governmental regulation and paperwork requirements.
“It just seems like it’s a way around saying you can’t have sexually explicit material by making it impossible to have sexually explicit material on the internet just because of record keeping,” Wright observes.
Hopefully, as the Free Speech Coalition, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, and other activist-education oriented groups join together, Hymes’ theory of power in numbers will prove true.
“You automatically extend your reach when you’re working together, so this is really an exciting development,” Hymes said.
