One local activist told me: "Freedom of speech defenders will always tell you that just because it's bad art, it shouldn't be banned.
Neil Gaiman author of graphic novels, comic books and other works of fiction was among the evening's honorees as one of its 2014 Free Speech Defenders.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has called on the federal government to revoke the protesters' permit, which provoked the ire of free speech defenders like the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Sun reports that the rally featured a diverse coalition of free speech defenders, including Congressman Bob Filner, representatives from the ACLU-SD, and Community Colleges Association President Ron Norton Reel.
How can we let such so-called "free speech defenders" control the narrative with their rhetoric of the right to spread prejudice and mistrust?
And as Floyd Abrams, an American lawyer and free-speech defender, notes, a book publisher, for example, will still be nervous about an author who has written a "libellous book .Mr Stephens, the London lawyer, is taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights, where he hopes to persuade judges that the size of English libel damages is disproportionate.
The use of London courts to sue Americans for material mainly published and read across the Atlantic has caused outrage among free-speech defenders in Congress and elsewhere; a proposed American law would allow defendants to counter-sue for harassment if they lose in a foreign case.
Free-speech defenders were outraged, seeing the move as doubly ill-conceived.
Flynt became an unlikely liberal hero, cementing a coalition between free-speech defenders and pornographers.
The theaters' decision to show the film follows renewed pleas from free-speech defenders and in fresh newspaper editorials for its release in Japan.
