Posted on 11/02/2001 1:17:11 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:38:59 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A sharply divided Virginia Supreme Court struck down a state law against cross-burning Friday, saying such acts of bigotry are a protected form of speech.
In a 4-3 ruling, the court threw out the convictions of three people in two cases. One involved the burning of a cross at a Ku Klux Klan rally; the other involved an attempted burning in the back yard of a black person.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I hate to join with the ACLU and the bigots, but it's true.
Lots of folk think that what I have to say about guns and abortion is offensive and beyond the pale, but it is protected by the constitution.
Count me with the ACLU and bigots on this one.
Buy your own wood, your own gasoline, your own matches, set the thing alight in your own back yard, and I'll listen to arguments that it is protected speach.
But if you come onto my property and try to set fire to a cross, you've gone well beyond your first amendment rights.
Well, the property owner should have responded to that exercise of First Amendment rights by vigorously exercising his Second Amendment rights in the general direction of the sheet-heads.
/sarcasm
It's just like the so-called "hate crimes" legislation. All of them must be defeated.
Huh?
Cross burning is arson, disturbing the peace, disorderly, trespass. No need to punish the symbolism; the act is enough to merit imposition of the law. And who can determine intent with absolute certainty? The necessity for so doing makes for an impossible burden in an otherwise simple, time-tested, common law process.
Some of the laws, however, seem extreme. Take the case of Edgar R. Barfield, 33 of Virginia Beach. Last years he was sentenced to 9 years in prison -- for burning a cross on the lawn of his neighbors while he was drunk and smoking pot.
Brian Swetnam, 22, of Bowie MD was sentenced last year to 10 yers in prison without parole for buring on Bowie High School grounds a cross. He was upset because some black students had assaulted a friend (or maybe it was him?), thus he was also found guilty of federal hate crimes.
The point is that if they had burned a circle or a square or some other shape in someone's backyard they would have not been charged with such a serious crime.
All "hate crime" laws are really "thought control" laws.
I feel that I am placed in fear of bodily harm by the burning of a U.S. flag. What's my option?
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