Posted on 08/05/2018 6:53:12 PM PDT by marshmallow
LINCOLNTON – The First Amendment right of a person to express his beliefs in public could be put to the test next month when a case involving a street preacher in Lincolnton goes to court.
Preachers who frequently take to the streets of the Lincoln County seat have come under increasing pressure since the city of roughly 11,000 approved changes to its ordinances late last year. Now, its noise ordinance prohibits “any person or group of persons willfully making any loud, raucous, or disturbing sound that – because of its volume, duration, and character – annoy, disturb, frighten, injure, or endanger the comfort, health, peace, or safety of reasonable persons of ordinary sensibilities in the neighborhood or Central Business District.”
Jeffrey Dean Shook, a street preacher, was the first person arrested under the city’s new ordinance. Shook is to appear in Lincoln County District Court, Monday, August 20th.
According to the Lincoln Herald, street preachers have shown up at multiple public events in the town over the past few years, including the Apple Festival in 2016 and several Alive After Five concerts.
Some attending the events complained and, after consulting the North Carolina School of Government, the Lincolnton City Council decided to tweak its ordinance to make creating a disturbance at events a misdemeanor. They held a public hearing and received input from speakers for and against the proposal before passing it unanimously in December.
Throughout the process, members of the council insisted that they were not targeting the street preachers or trying to curtail the sharing of the Gospel, but wanted to give police clarity on how to enforce the noise ordinance, which had initially been passed in 1997.
Return America President Ron Baity doubts that is so.
“The bottom line is the city simply does not......
(Excerpt) Read more at christianactionleague.org ...
Because I can read the headline.
"Street Preacher’s Arrest in Lincolnton [GA) Causes Concerns about Free Speech Rights
"The city of Lincolnton is the county seat of Lincoln county, Georgia, United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincolnton,_Georgia
If the town was using this ordinance to keep a local mosque from broadcasting a call to prayer X times a day would people still be complaining about it?
Thee is a Lincolnton, Georgia. I have been there many times.
But the headline is wrong. This is Lincolnton, North Carolina.
The Lincolnton in the story is the one is question. It is in North Carolina. The headline stays Georgia. It doesn’t matter how many Lincolntons there are in other states. This article is about the one in North Carolina.
Oh very nicely played
The real headline does not include the Georgia paren. It was a mistak by the original poster
This is occurring in NC. I realize reading the article is a pain and something some FRets don’t bother with. Note that there is good info in this article written by the group the so called pastor leads. He was disturbing movie nights in this small town as well as a local festival. Public events are not an open forum for some jerk to yell whatever his understanding (or misunderstanding) of the Bible is
Yes...
Old School as Well!
I challenge you to find anywhere in the story where they say which state in which this occurred. The closest will you will be able to come is where it says they consulted The North Carolina School for Government. So which of us read for content and who read into the story facts not contained?
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