CANARIES IN A FREE-SPEECH MINESHAFT

On October 10, 2004, an organization called PhillyPride held its annual Outfest event in Philadelphia. PhillyPride.org bills the event as “the largest coming out day celebration in the world.”

Attendance of Outfest participants last year is estimated at between 25,000 and 32,000 people. Among them on October 10 were eleven people who came, in their words, “out of love” for the gay attendants, and with the goal of engaging in street corner preaching and evangelism.

Shortly after arriving, the eleven were confronted by counter-demonstrators called The Pink Angels equipped with large foam angel-shaped barriers, as well as police and an attorney for the city who was on hand. Soon, the eleven people found themselves under arrest after singing songs and quoting scripture.

While the average liberty-respecting American would most likely acknowledge that the gay attendants at Outfest had every right to organize, attend, and enjoy their public event, the question of whether or not the street preachers have an equal right to reach out to gays seems to be more controversial.

Their conduct is controversial to the point that those street preachers are now facing up to 47 years in jail each, for crimes such as criminal conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime (that would be a battery powered voice amplifier), reckless endangerment of another person, ethnic intimidation (homosexuality deemed as an ethnicity under Pennsylvania law), riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and obstructing highways.

No matter where one stands personally on issues of Christian evangelism and gay rights, it is of immense importance to know the objective facts of why eleven people were arrested in Philadelphia in October for what they said and why five people face felony charges still. This case is an illustration of the fact that without vigilance and a real belief in our freedoms, today’s upstanding citizen group can easily become tomorrow’s criminal.

Having read numerous accounts of the event from the perspectives of both sides, I recently had the opportunity to interview one of the men arrested and hear about the arrests at the October, 2004 Outfest firsthand.

Denny Green has been involved with pro-life outreach as part of Life and Liberty Ministries in Virginia (www.lifeandlibertyministries.com) since 1994. Green says that, “Outfest was pretty much an afterthought. Just a few days before [the event] we learned that Outfest was taking place on Sunday, so we came up a day early so we could go to that also for street outreach.”

The group of eleven, Green says, had three goals in mind at the Outfest festival, “to preach the gospel if given the opportunity, if there was an area we could set up and there was an audience there to hear and there wasn’t a lot of noise and we were actually able to preach; we were going to do that, but also we were going to give out Gospel literature, and try to talk one-on-one with people.”

It was the third goal, to make person-to-person connections, that had the most emphasis. “Only two people out of our eleven had any intention of doing any preaching, out of our eleven” said Green. The rest were prepared to share their literature and thoughts with any individual Outfest attendants who wanted to talk with them.

Green also says, “We didn’t really get an opportunity to do a whole lot of preaching – just a little bit. It was only after we were arrested and we were waiting for the paddy-wagon that we could actually do any preaching, since we were only on the street 13 to 15 minutes before we were arrested.” The attorney in me places great significance on the word “after”, as one might reasonably think that it would be conduct before an arrest that would actually get a person arrested.

From the time the eleven arrived to the time they were under arrest was 15 minutes or less, all of which was captured from at least two separate camera angles by a documentary film crew from San Francisco based Enough Said Productions, which is not connected to the eleven arrested street preachers.

All of that footage, seven minutes of which I have viewed from an online source (http://www.afa.net/clp/videos/philly11.wmv), was made available to the judges considering the criminal cases against the street preachers. From the seven minutes that I have seen, the group of eleven did little more than sing “blessed be the name of the Lord,” display signs, discuss the finer points of the right to assemble with police officers, and otherwise walk from place to place at the direction of law enforcement and city officials.

At one point in the footage the apparent leader of the eleven street preachers, Michael Marcavage, notes that they are too close to the main stage of the event and wants to go elsewhere so that their attempts at preaching would not clash with the main event.

A nearby police officer then remarks, “This is a public sidewalk on a public street; you can go where you want.”

Four minutes into the footage available online a police official says “stop here if you want to.” The group stopped there. Shortly after, all eleven were under arrest.

The attorney in me asks, “On what charges?” So did Green. The answer he got from the nearest police official was “You’ll find out later. We’ll figure that out later” They did later find out, as described at the beginning of this article. A battery-operated bullhorn becomes an “instrument of crime”, showing up with like-minded individuals to preach becomes “criminal conspiracy”, and being blocked and heckled becomes “criminal endangerment of another person”, and so on.

Green asked all the officers within earshot with what they were being charged. They did not find out what the charges were until they were being processed. At that time there were four charges. It grew to eight criminal charges after the District Attorney got involved. The senior police officer on the scene has the duty of serving as liaison between law enforcement and the gay community. I’ve been unable to find any record of a Philadelphia official with the duty of serving as liaison between law enforcement and the evangelical Christian community.

Eleven street preachers arrived at Outfest last October, and all were arrested between fifteen and twenty minutes later. Five still face charges, including one 17-year-old young woman. Those who remain in danger of felony convictions carrying a potential penalty of 47 years in prison are all white and relatively young. Charges against, for instance, the seventy-two-year-old Black woman, the retired public school teacher, and anyone who “didn’t fit the mold” were dropped, even though all eleven had attended Outfest with the same intent and engaged in the same activity.

In Green’s words, “it does look like they were trying to tailor the group to seem like angry white gay-bashers.”

Asked what he thought of the judge’s decision on what charges would stand, Green thinks that their attorneys did a great job at preliminary hearings, and explained that their attorneys had shown, in part through the use of the video record of the events, that reality did not fit the charges. After the defense attorney’s presentation, Green thought, “If this is a just man, [the charges are] going to be thrown out.”

Nonetheless, the judge let the charges stand. “We looked at each other in bewilderment,” Green says, “it would be like going to Wal-Mart and buying apples and learning you were charged with rape.” Anyone who faced forty-seven years in prison for fifteen minutes of standing on a sidewalk and singing might agree.

According to Green, now a criminal defendant, the judge expressed in open court during the preliminary hearing that a person quoting the Bible to a gay person in this context is both fighting words, and hate speech. The District Attorney, described as “red-faced and yelling”, urged the Court to view the Christian street preachers as “evil”.

Denny Green seems optimistic going into the next phase of his ordeal. The group of Outfest street preachers, now down to five defendants, will have their next appearance on February 17th, 2005. Green’s spirits are buoyed by a different judge at the last hearing they attended, declaring that “the only crime I see [in the video] that they are guilty of is wretched singing.”

Green agrees that many would say that they had brought this on themselves, but that, according to his beliefs, he is not duty-bound to only bring................Full Article www.FreeMarketNews.com

this is just a warm-up
Though it hurts my brain to think of Clintons in power, in this scenario, Hillary is neither "the woman" nor "the dragon", imo:

And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

That's when it's really "hot".

At that time there were four charges. It grew to eight criminal charges after the District Attorney got involved.
the judge expressed in open court during the preliminary hearing that a person quoting the Bible to a gay person in this context is both fighting words, and hate speech.

The District Attorney, described as “red-faced and yelling”, urged the Court to view the Christian street preachers as “evil”.

If the judge or DA are sodomites...there might be a reason to suspect they are falsifying charges..using their positions of power illegally?...and would this not be a hate crime?...a hate crime of sodomites perpetrated upon heterosexual Christians?

The real criminals here are obviously the sodomite demonstrators and the judge and DA

Looks like we are witnessing the 'rebirth' of the Nazi Party...the very last thing these folks would ever allow themselves to see themselves as...

imo

The Homosexual Roots of the Nazi Party

Why did you chop off the last few sentences of the article?

Green agrees that many would say that they had brought this on themselves, but that, according to his beliefs, he is not duty-bound to only bring a message to those who invite the message, but is bound to try to reach as many people as possible. He relates that many attorneys from gay advocacy groups are watching this case to see "how far they can go" in muzzling Christian street preachers like himself. In that sense the "Philly Five" are the canary in the mineshaft for the future of free-speech litigation.

-Why did you chop off the last few sentences of the article?-

Indeed, it's the most important part of the article. Free speech is the enemy of the left. This whole episode is entirely frightening.

I hope those preachers sue the crap out of Philly when it's all over.

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