Bailout of Fannie/Freddie - a Move Toward Socialized Housing?

In April, in Finding a Roommate Online: It’s illegal to ask sexual orientation, race, or religion to choose a roommate, I wrote about the Fair Housing Act being applied to an online roommate-finding service.

As Wired.com explained in April:

Apartment hunting site Roommates.com cannot shield itself from an housing discrimination lawsuit by claiming it is just an internet forum, because the site requires users to answer questions about their gender, marital status and sexual orientation, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

The ruling is an important one because it sets a limit on a federal law protecting internet forums from lawsuits. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act largely frees websites, online forums and ISPs from responsibility for what users say on their sites. Online freedom advocates describe that law as the best thing Congress has ever done for freedom of expression on the internet, since it allows social networking sites, hosted blogging services and news sites with commenting features — like this one — to let users be responsible for their words.

That legal immunity doesn’t apply to Roommates.com, the court ruled, because the check boxes on the site actively solicit discriminatory content, making the service much more than a simple forum….(more)

And I wrote in response:

The larger story here is that the advocates for the political-correctness agenda onine have just won a major victory while advocates for personal liberty and freedom of speech online have sustained a loss. Watch for more lawsuits like this, in which things like “discrimination” and “hate speech” become not only frowned upon by the online community, but actually illegal.

With this in mind, I cannot help but shudder a bit when I hear that the federal government has just seized two more major mortgage companies. I have to ask myself how long it will be before affirmative action and gay-rights activists will be suing the federal government for special considerations in neighborhood planning in lending practices? How long before banks and Realtors will be given special tax breaks and preference on corporate contracts according to their commitment to promoting the diversity doctrine?

It won’t be long.

Update: See Major Earmark in Democrat Bailoutand What’s The Holdup On The Bailout? [Hint, it involves ACORN and the Nat'l Council on LaRaza...]

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Also see: Michelle Malkin - Here it is: The Mother of all government bailouts and Paulies Point - Senate Comrades Pass Bailout Plan