Pamela Geller, American Thinker: Fighting for Free Speech in Detroit

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Fighting for Free Speech in Detroit Pamela Geller, American Thinker

When I tried to put ads
on Detroit buses offering help to Muslims threatened by their families
or communities for leaving Islam (e.g., Rifqa Bary), Detroit's SMART
transportation authority banned the ads. This wasn't surprising in view
of the large Muslim population in the Detroit area, but it was a key
free speech issue: Is it still legal in America to say something Muslims
don't like and reach out to Muslims endangered by Islam's death penalty
for apostasy? Isn't this country based on individual rights and equal
protection for all?

So my organization, FDI, filed suit. Was free
speech still free? I went to Detroit on Tuesday to make the case — and
to testify in my lawsuit against Detroit for infringing on my freedom of
speech. It was another day at the circus in the upside-down world of
the left; the only difference is that the real circus is far more
entertaining, and the animals are far more intelligent.

My hearing in Detroit was
entertaining on a buffoonish level. The SMART legal team twisted itself
into Gordian knots, doing everything it could to avoid the free speech
issues involved. I half-expected Avery Gordon, lead attorney for SMART,
to deliver his closing in the shape of a human pretzel. Gordon was quite
taken with himself and his lawyerly acrobatics. Though few shared his
enthusiasm, he strutted like a rooster and danced like a lummox. His
arguments resembled the first really popular computer game, "pong,"
bouncing all over the map.

First, Gordon contended that SMART denied my ads
because they were "political speech." He made this the centerpiece of
his case. He denied that the ads were religious in nature. Are these ads
political?

But under cross-examination, Beth Gibbons, a
witness for SMART, admitted on the witness stand that the ads were
not denied based on content. End game. Badabing, badaboom.

Gibbons went on to say that the
ads were refused because of the "controversy" over them when they ran in
Miami. She said that she had seen an opinion piece against the ads
written by the Miami Herald's Jaweed Kaleem, a shill for the unindicted
co-conspirator, Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front group, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR). Where did she see this piece? Get this: in the
Department of Transit newsletter (online).

But the money quote from Gibbons
was that the ad was rejected not because of its content. And
Gordian-knot Gordon kept repeating that the viewpoint of the SMART
authorities had nothing to do with the decision. So if it wasn't
rejected for content, and none of their views, biases, and prejudices
came into play, then why was it rejected?