On Thursday, February 1, 1996, the so-called "Communications Decency Act" was passed by the U.S. Congress. One week later, President Clinton signed this travesty into law. For the next 16 months, the content of every Web Page, E-mail, and Usenet posting originating in the United States was subject to a half-baked censorship law, created by Internet-ignorant politicians, and supported by an Internet-ignorant public. Finally, on Thursday, June 26, 1997, this law was unanimously ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. To quote Justice John Paul Stevens:

"As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship."

There were far too many ramifications of this ill-considered piece of legislation to count. However, here are just a few.

• While the Communications Dececny Act was in effect, some of the former content of these pages was deemed illegal. Had it been kept around, this "offensive" content would have subjected myself and staff members of zarquon.org to large fines and jail time.
  
• While the Communications Decency Act was in effect, United States citizens could not use the "seven dirty words" in ANY electronic media -- this included "private" E-mail as well as publicly accessible web pages, E-mail, IRC and USENET newsgroups without risking jail time and large fines.
  
• When voting on the Communications Decency Act, most of the elected representatives of the United States citizenry violated their oath of office by ignoring the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States: the Bill of Rights. Be sure to remember this come election time.
  
• If you live in the United States and didn't write your representatives about this issue, this problem was partially YOUR fault.
  YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.

If you are easily offended, do not browse these web pages. If you are easily offended and browse them anyway, do not come crying to me; you were fairly warned and should have taken the responsiblity to avoid it. The fact that you have access to the Internet does not obligate you to use it in an ignorant manner.

If, in either case, you are easily offended and you feel compelled to attempt to protect the sensibilities of others who might encounter this page, don't even bother. You have NO implicit right to judge me or to protect others; that's God's business and theirs respectively -- not yours. After all, according to the Judeo-Christian philosophy, God's greatest gift to mankind is free will. Kindly allow others to enjoy it, even if you yourself don't.

And another thing... Keep your morality to yourself, and teach it to your children yourself, instead of trying to force the goddamn government to do it for you.