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 ...
Bet there are plenty of skeletons in the city council closets.
Grotesque violation of his right to free speech. I hope he ends up owning the town.
Street Preachers...
A Breed Apart!
Don’t see many in SoCal.
This story lacks any credibility. Or else the posted headline is wrong.
Georgia doesn't have District Courts. They have Superior Courts, State Courts (although Lincoln County may not have one of those), Juvenile Courts, Probate Courts (formerly known as Courts of the Ordinary), Magistrate Courts (a few counties have what are called Civil Courts but they use the Magistrate Judges and Clerks), Municipal Courts, and Recorders Courts. But no District Courts.
At the least it is overly broad, and subjective. "endanger," "reasonable persons of ordinary sensibilities," Are snowflakes reasonable persons of ordinary sensibilities who do not feel endangered by ideas that are contrary to PC?
I'm just down the road from Lincolnton, GA so I assumed the story was about GA but it could well be NC.
My apologies.
This is not in Georhia. It is in North Carolina
Just because someone carries a Bible doesn’t mean much All sorts of blowhards claim all sorts of nonsense.
Disturbing a public event is always bad behavior
It’s in NC
Don’t know what yob thought it was in Georgia
I have no problem with Bible carriers, thumpers, or whatever- But the snake handlers, they sort of disturb me depending on their distance...
I don’t want them interrupting a small town’s movie night or the local farmers market or the fair or festival.
The problem I have with most of these so called preachers is that I am better trained and versed in the Bible than they are. They all too often know nothing of original languages, they disdain commentaries by the greats (eg Spurgeon), they do not understand context and they know little of history
We use to spend summers in Linconton, GA. It’s WAY to small to have this issue.
If it doesn’t have to do with Highschool football, the Lincolnton folk just won’t care.
Street preaching offending the noise ordinance? Loud vehicles create more offensive noise. The nanny state has turned into a freedom denying bully. They will destroy our lives bit by bit.
Lincolnton is in NORTH CAROLINA — not Georgia. This is Go’d country where Christianity is alive and strong.
Brings back childhood memories in Brooklyn. They came in the summer & the kids on the block would sit on the curb watching them set up.
The Prince of Pulpiteers!
I assume, even if this is NC and not GA, that these street preachers are like the street preacher who used to hang out at the Downtown Atlanta MARTA subway station. I don’t know his name, but a lot of us referred to him as Screaming Willie. He screamed so loud and violently, it could sometimes shock even folks who saw him only a daily basis. The tourists were certainly disturbed by him, and I doubt if any of them got a religious message, or even understood much of what he was saying.
I respect his right to do that. But I also see how someone would want to regulate this behavior in some way. Like, for example, limiting the decibels of sound allowed.
I would suggest that anyone who hasn’t experienced such behavior might want to be slow to judge. It may not be what you think.
I appreciate what you are saying but this is the ordinance as stated in the article,
“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.”
Who is to judge the ‘character’ of one’s speech? Or exactly what ‘annoys’ someone? Or what is a ‘disturbing sound’? The ordinance is ridiculously vague. If this could stand you might as well abolish the first amendment.
In my city they amended the noise ordinance to include ice cream truck music from the Mexican owned ice cream vendors. Theres only so much accordion music a person can tolerate I guess.
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