In late January, they were hit with a crushing $107 million punitive verdict by a jury in Portland OR. Such verdicts are often reduced or even reversed on appeal; nevertheless, "Christian Gallery"s ISP, Mindspring, took their site down on 5 Feb 1999. They are looking for a new ISP.
Anti-abortion extremists claim that the verdict threatens First Amendment liberties, because calling abortion doctors "murderers" is no worse than much other political rhetoric that is tolerated. The comparison is misleading, however: the issue here is "stalking": posting addresses and identifying info so that individuals and their families can be murdered by true-believers.
I have reposted three pages of the "Christian Gallery" site, so that viewers can judge for themselves. I have blanked out identifying information of intended victims, however: Numbers are replaced with "9" and letters with "x".
Home Page of "Christian Gallery"
Acceptable political rhetoric.
Master page of hit list.
Notice the chilling list of info solicited by the terrorists, eg about family members and friends. Their title "Nuremberg Files" is inadvertently appropriate; after all, the Nazis were also militant anti-abortionists, and the Gestapo showed comparable diligence in compiling personal information.
I deleted the names of a handful of doctors.
Sample Hit List page of an individual doctor. I have blanked out (Xs and 9s) all the identifying material from the original page.
as actually written:
I hope Harvey is wrong. To me, the "Claiborne" opinion doesn't convey an acceptance of the explicit violence one sees at the "Christian Gallery" site. If the USSC were to uphold "Christian Gallery," however, they will be opening the floodgates to civil war of the most bloody and relentless kind.
"SAN FRANCISCO, March 28 -- A 3-judge panel for the 9th Circuit of Appeals threw out a record $109 million verdict against abortion opponents today, ruling that a Web site and wanted posters that branded abortion doctors 'baby butchers and criminals were protected by the First Amendment.
[...]
"If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others," then their works could properly support the verdict, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the appeals court. But if their works "merely encouraged unrelated terrorists," he said, "then their words are protected by the First Amendment."
[end of excerpts]
On 27 June 2003, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the "Nuremberg" terrorists.
On 6 Sept 2005, a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit reduced the punitive damages award from $108 million to about $4.7 million, in accordance with a 2003 USSC decision restricting punitive damages to a certain multiple of proven actual damages.