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]
Who cares about people’s feelings or emotions? Long as they get to spew their hatred, you folks are ok with that, huh?
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Clearly, you’ve allowed your emotions to rule the day for you on this issue.
I don’t think anyone posting on this thread even remotely resembles the straw man you are tearing down with your “you folks”, “you people”, with a follow up “you folks”.
You would really work to limit some of everyone’s first amendment rights in order not to have your feelings hurt? Are there not other ways we can limit the exposure of these folks?
I prefer justices would uphold the Constitution rather than adjudicate based on "feelings" and (those who have one) "conscience." All 4 or 5 of the libs and activists got it right this time. (Yes, blind pigs and stopped clocks.)
Regardless, let's hope this is the last time he screws up, and that we never have reason to look back on this decision as marking the birth of the latest failed Republican SCOTUS appointment. That would be the end of our 5-4 victories.
As long as the public thinks they’re a church, the left will continue to support them financially.
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That is a claim I’ve never heard leveled before. My understanding has been their funding comes from their litigiousness.
Do you have a link as to the source of their funding?
I just want to go on record saying that the Supreme Court has a short memory about freedom of speech decisions.
In the late 1980's, I was present at a peaceful anti-abortion protest in the area of a 'clinic' in north Melbourne, FL. In a panic, and with resources on their side, the clinic operators got an injunction against the protests that established a "buffer zone" extending onto public property around the clinic.
The protests were limited to the following:
- brochure handouts
- prayer on the sidewalk in front of the clinic
- side displays
- songs, slogans (which actually came from both sides)
- no physical confrontations, no violence whatsoever (though it was, of course, alleged)
The case made it to SCOTUS, and the clinic won. How this case is different is beyond me: the "interests" of the "patients" are no different from those of the mourners in this case. The speech involved is a political protest -- the same as is alleged by the Westbrook cult.
Now frankly, I believe the Melbourne case wasn't argued correctly -- the context was framed poorly. Nonetheless, this is a diametrically opposite decision for a case in which the facts could be construed as essentially equal.
Also, for the record: I personally believe SCOTUS was wrong on both cases... I see today's case about a private matter, not open for public protest. The Melbourne case was about a group attempting to prevent murder.
...
The court just reminded Americans they DO have a choice and a right to their opinions free from left wing retribution.
Bingo!
Free speech as the Founders envisioned it, concerned political speech. I don’t believe that this is political speech or that the Founders would have approved.
I hate to say it, but I agree with the decision on this. It’d be awful to have policy based on worst of the worst exception. If someone kills the Westboro bunch, I’ll applaud.
“In Denmark, a 15-year-old Danish boy faces prison time for distributing leaflets warning that the country could someday become a Muslim nation and that he thinks that is a bad thing. A Danish prosecutor called the leaflets “hate speech.”
“For instance, Islam teaches that when Mohammed was 52, he consummated his marriage to a 9-year-old girl. But when Austrian politician Susanne Winter said that, in today’s world, Mohammed would be considered a child molester, she was convicted of hate speech.”
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2009/September/Islamophobia-Worldwide-Free-Speech-Threat/
“So-called “hate speech” is illegal in Britain, but that depends on who is doing the hating. When the British citizens protested the Mohammad cartoons at the Danish Embassy London in 2006, they expressed their allegiance to terrorists. They called for beheadings and nuclear attacks. British police arrested no one until there was public uproar. Compare that to when a British news program exposed violent rhetoric in local mosques. British police originally decided to arrest not the radical Imams who spewed the hatred and bigotry, but the news program that did the report for allegedly stirring up racial hatred.”
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/906049/can_britain_survive_politically_correct.html
The UK and Europe do not have a 1st Amendment protecting free speech. Do we want to follow their example?
From what I have read the WBC cult is Phelps and his immediate family that live in that compound. Very few outsiders are involved with his “church.”
You are being an intentional literal lizzy.
Yes, we can all tell an honorable US soldier from a WBC jacka$$. And I think you know that.
The real world is, however, a bit more nuanced than that.
Would Ronald Reagan’s sense of who should be shut down differ from that of Obama?
You go ahead and pat yourself on the back for your moral clarity, while the rest of us deal with the real issues of the day. You know, the ones that the bright lights of your moral clarity are blinding you to.
We don’t need to do anything at liberal funerals.....as they did at the Wellstone Funerally.....they will do it themselves.
In the UK, WBC members could be arrested for hate speech, but so could anyone who criticises islam.
Thanks to this precedence, none is outlawed, therefore anyone can say and do ANYTHING and it’s allowed as constitutionally protected free speech.
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Nice try. Slipping the word ‘do’ into the construction, as though we’d miss it.
This precedent does nothing of the sort.
I haven’t paid much attention to this bunch in a few years, but if they are slandering our dead soldiers calling them baby killers, for example, it should not be protected speech. I can’t go around yelling fire, when there is none, in a crowded theater......I can and should get arrested for disrupting others. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about this subject. I guess I will have to review the thread and read some articles on the decision.
It’s only ambiguous and vague until someone walks up to you on the street and calls your wife a whore.
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LOL. As though you’d really be thinking about 1st A rights at that point.
You’d kick the person’s a$$ without thinking, and bite the bullet for your actions, all the while knowing them to be correct. If not legal.
The aim is to agg people into decking one of them. We have an element in this country now who wants chaos so they will be “called on”, like Hitler, to take total charge. Someone, or some group, is bankrolling these reprobate lounge lizards. - Their connection with the Democrats is intersting. Cousin Raila and his chaos machine got my attention.
“If the court had ruled against them the left would have used this to attack free speech that they consider anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-leftist . .”
Aha! You hit the nail on the head! That’s why the Democrats might bankroll the Westboro crew!
Now, any suggestions from anyone as to how to CREATIVELY neutralize this bunch of reprobates aside from violence?
“And for another, everybody on this forum who cheered this $5 million verdict. There was nary a whisper about free speech back then.”
Well, a civil judgment really doesn’t have anything to do with free speech. The 1st Amendment only stops the Feds from restricting speech, it doesn’t protect us from the consequences of our speech. So, personally, I don’t understand how the Supremes cited the 1st amendment in throwing out the civil judgment, since that doesn’t really seem to apply here.
BTW, I do agree that the WBB’s protests are protected by the 1st Amendment, I just see how the 1st Amendment protects them from being sued for emotional distress, etc.
“I just see how the 1st Amendment...”
Oops I meant to write “I just don’t see”
Scotus is wrong.
This is not a free speech issue. It is a property rights issue.
When I inter my child in any cemetery, I have arranged for that time and place with the official custodians of that cemetery. For that period of time, I have reserved it just as surely as I have reserved a hall for a wedding, a club for a dance, a stadium for a game, a pavilion area for a picnic.
As the property “renter” at that moment, I can keep others out of my hall, club, stadium, or picnic area.
Moreover, if they attempt to crash my area with tresspass of body, sound, light, or other means of disruption, then they have violated my property rights.
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