Stanton responds to the listowners' threats

Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 09:19:49 -0500
From: Stanton <speele@ibm.net>
To: rob ryley <rmr7@tiger.uofs.edu>, robin room <rroom@arf.org>, roizen <rroizen@ix.netcom.com>, ethan nadelmann <enadelmann@sorosny.org>, arjan <webmaster@sasict.nl>
Subject: Stanton banned from CD list!

Oh, mein Gott! I've been banned from the CD list (along with Robin Room and Robert Ryley) for falsifying reality!

I ran afoul of the authorities when, finally tiring of one shrill broadside and insult following on another in Amos Ginsburg and listowner Jeff Schaler's picayune debates with Robin, I spoke out. While not being particularly inclined to defend Robin, the list appeared to me to be one long gang attack on his views and person. I'll never put up with that.

The official charges against us are of "dishonesty" and "irresponsibility." While we all subscribe to these values, they also read like the charge sheet in a Stalin purge. Outside of CD, the First Amendment protects any but slanderous claims (to be proved in a court of law) - because dishonesty and irresponsibility lie so much in the eye of the beholder. US Courts and the Congress allow practically any statement during election campaigns, on the principle that voters (in this case, read list members) can judge for themselves the validity of competing statements.

On the CD list, only recently Jeff asked me if he could solicit new members to the list by marketing excerpts of the exchanges for which I am now to be banned! I refused to allow him to use me in this way on the grounds that this was gross chutzpah. (Would Jeff's banning me for comments he previously wanted to use for promotional purposes be an example of dishonesty and irresponsibility?)

Jeff and I used to laugh together about both of us having been banned by a bunch of rigid disease theory advocates from the Addiction Medicine list. In my banning on that list, however, there was an extensive discussion among list members, many of whom defended me, before a decision was taken (and then rescinded, as I was soon invited to rejoin).

Following that incident, I wrote a spirited paragraph on Jeff's behalf when the Project MATCH leadership tried to muzzle him (which he included in his article on MATCH).

But to be banned from the CD list! Throughout the eighties, my professional career was eroded to the point of disappearing because I alone among prominent psychologists defended the Sobells and maintained the validity of CD therapy (and not only for "problem drinkers").

Now I am banned from the list devoted to CD in all its aspects! In these Star Chamber proceedings, complaining to the listmaster at St. John's will result in my "removal from any and all lists at St. John's and prevention from further subscription to St. John's lists."

I hardly need to point out that the Internet is meant to be a medium of free communication that helps otherwise powerless people circumvent institutional power to suppress their views. How ironic (or perhaps not so much) that a list devoted to views most often suppressed in US addiction treatment and policy is now shutting out those who challenge the statements of its management.

Stanton Peele