Posted on 03/02/2011 7:27:39 AM PST by Pyro7480
Edited on 03/02/2011 7:31:23 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects fundamentalist church members who mount attention-getting, anti-gay protests outside military funerals.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted2.ap.org ...
“what if someone yells “Fire!” in a public place?”
When is yelling “fire” in a crowded theater protected speech?
Answer:
A)...when it’s in the script.
B)...when there IS a fire.
There is nothng in the Contitution the allows government to impair free speech under the First Amendment simply because the speech makes people feel uncomfortable. I have read the SCOTUS decision and I concur.
No other decision they could have made if we want to keep freedom of speech.
All that you folks and the Supremes are doing is giving these thugish nuts the absolute right to do absolutely ANYTHING to call the attention of the sycophantic media to their cause.
What's next? They'll be able to picket the funerals of child victims of pedophile sexual abuse to get even more attention or even more heinous tactics?
You people and the Supremes are just blowing the lid off of this kind of thing. What about when they show up at rape trials and claim that women get raped because it's God's judgment and will because America supports gay's, like they protest at these military funerals?
That's only two quick examples off the top of my head. These WBB nuts are ALL trained lawyers. Like the Clintons, they didn't train in law, they trained in the WEAKNESSES in the law and if it can occur to me, it'll occur to them in time too.
Hey, public property, remember? I'll probably get taken down because, hey, it's free speech, right? Who cares about people's feelings or emotions? Long as they get to spew their hatred, you folks are ok with that, huh?
This is a MAJOR can of worms.
Peaceful assembly is one thing, but disturbing the peace is another. Why haven’t the sissified cops arrested these punks when they get loud and distruptive?
The only way to fight them is to ignore them. They are in this to provoke reactions which form the basis of lawsuits. So, sure, maybe rape trials are next. They want people to attack them, or municipalities to ban them, so they can sue. They’re only in it for the money. Once people just ignore them the money will dry up and they will go away. No need to endanger other people’s right to protest.
From the CNN article:
Only Justice Samuel Alito dissented. He said the church’s “outrageous conduct caused petitioner great injury, and the court now compounds that injury by depriving petitioner of a judgment that acknowledges the wrong he suffered,” he said. “In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner.”
You're right. The only way they could have decided against WBB was by holding "offensiveness" to be a basis for denying 1st Amendment rights. That would have opened the gates wide for attacks on FR, the Tea Parties, etc. and de facto repealed the 1st Amendment. We're fortunate the leftists on the Court didn't vote with Alito.
This is a great ratification of our constitutional right to speak out without fear. There is nothing in the constitution about yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. What that is an intentional tort resulting in bodily injury . You cant pass a law and a law was NEVER passed that says you can’t cry “fire” in a crowded theater. CONGRESS SHALL PASS NO LAW ABRIDGING FREEDOM OF SPEECH” Thank God for the judiciary to keep out rights. Let’s go picket their “Church”.
Who decides what is hate and what is not? The left believes the Holy Bible stands in the way of everything they believe in. Is the Bible a book of hate? Who decides?
Expose them. They're Al Gore activists. The left would shut them down in a heart beat if they felt the protests were backfiring. As long as the public thinks they're a church, the left will continue to support them financially.
There was out and out cheering when that verdict came down.
Thank-you for your service to our country.
The KKK gets to hold its rallies just like the Tea Party does. While the KKK is offensive to most Americans, you can find people who view the Tea Party with equal contempt. Allowing people to limit speech based on being offended is a road we cannot go down, because sooner or later your speech will be offensive to someone.
However, I could see an argument that what WBC does could be construed in the same manner as “Fighting Words”.
From Wikipedia:
The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In its 9-0 decision, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine and held that “insulting or ‘fighting words,’ those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are among the “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech [that] the prevention and punishment of...have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem.”
One man's THUG is another man's HERO
If you can pick and choose who is a thug- you can also pick and choose who is a hero
I don't want a government du jour picking and choosing their heroes and thugs - do you?
That too, of course. But people must avoid directly confronting them or trying to get these "protests" banned. That is playing right into their hands.
It seems as long as women have been given the absolute right, by the Supreme Court, to privacy to kill their unborn babies, by abortion, then we all can claim a right of personal privacy to do just about anything, moral or immoral that we want.
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