One Phelps daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, has been arrested in Nebraska, arrested and then released, for allegedly " contributing to the delinquency of a minor."
The first link is from a Topeka television station, the second is from the Boston Herald, and the third from the Topeka paper, the Capital-Journal.
If Connecticut ever wanted to do anything about funeral protestors, I don’t see why they couldn’t find any legal loopholes on the books that would have allowed them to do such without writing an entirely new law open to immense criticism from those concerned with the Constitution. One precedent that no one has mentioned yet is the phenomenon of the “free-speech zones” that were set up around recent political conventions, for the purpose of clearly marking where and when free assembly would be tolerated. Not that it’s necessarily a GOOD thing to look for legal loopholes…in many cases, it isn’t. But this wouldn’t be the first time that the constitutionality of a new law such as this one has been questioned.
Personally, I think it would be better to handle “protests” such as those by the WBC on an individual basis, if one really wanted to take them to trial (preferably in civil court rather than criminal). I’m waiting for the day when the WBC crosses a group with loads more money and legal savvy than them, and can make, for once, and adequate case against them. One big difference between the WBC and other not-so-popular groups - the KKK, the Neo-Nazis, the New Black Panthers, etc. - is that the WBC’s goal is almost certainly not recruitment of new members or getting their message into the public arena for the message’s sake. Rather, their motivation might well be: 1) purposely inciting anger and hatred in a group at potentially the most disrespectful time, for the purpose of: 2) further alienating the WBC from society, thus strengthening Phelps’ position within it. Again, I’m not talking about criminal court here, but I think that there have been lawsuits filed and won on the basis of a lot less than that. Basically, this would send the message of, “you are a bunch of assholes, you know it, and we are calling you out on it this time.” And no new laws on the books, so the First Amendment stays as it should.
Exquisite attention has been paid in this thread to the rights of Fred Phelps, which is certainly appropriate. But the people organizing the funerals have First Amendment rights as well - those of peaceable assembly and free worship. And those rights are jeopardized by Phelps’ actions.
Given that government exists to secure these rights to its citizens, it is entirely proper for it to weigh the First Amendment protections due the funeral organizers and the Westboro Baptist Church, and balance the two.
I wouldn’t take it personally. The different reaction has nothing to do with people not caring about gays. It’s that people actively admire servicemen, as servicemen, and consider their funerals to be of special significance. Hence, they are especially disgusted by protests at military funerals. In other words, it’s not that they like gays less than other people, it’s that they like veterans more than other people.
I think one of the most repugnant things about the WBC’s tactics is that they seem to specifically target “captive audiences”. In this country, you have the right to say whatever the hell you want (as long as you don’t threaten me personally), and I have the right (or, I guess you could call it a “choice” since it isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution) not to listen to you. So, if I should happen to pass a KKK assembly in front of the courthouse, I damn well am not going to stick around to listen to their drivel. However, exactly what recourse do funeral-goers have? Leave the body and go somewhere else until the WBC group disperses?
My feeling is that the WBC knows funeral groups are vulnerable, they know that they cannot just walk away from an incomplete interment, and thus the potential for negative impact in the media (which I believe is what they really want) is much higher than if they chose to picket in some random other public area. This, to me, goes beyond “we are expressing our views, love’em or leave 'em”, and borders on “we are knowingly using tactics that are guaranteed to incite the most anger and negativity, because that is what we want”.
If the only real recourse that people at the picketed funerals have is to drown out the hate speech with motorcycle noise, then so be it, but in that case we need a LOT more of such a thing to marginalize the WBC’s cause. I may not want to put all the assholes in jail, but that doesn’t mean I want them to continue to be assholes all the same.
Now you’re just making stuff up. If Phelps were doing either of those things, he could be arrested under already existing laws. There’d be no need for this new legislation at all.
Yeah, right. Wanna buy a bridge?
Unless you work in that courthouse, or have business with the court that day, in which case you’re as much a captive audience as the funeral procession.
No they aren’t. The Phelp’s clan’s acts don’t stop people from worshipping. As far as “peaceable assembly” goes, I thought it meant the right to assemble in a peaceful fashion (as opposed to a riot), rather than the right to go un-picketed.
Seriously? You actually think Phelps & co. are generating more outrage now just because they’re annoying heteros, and not because those heteros are at military funerals?
If so, I think your anger might be clouding your judgement, because that’s pretty clearly wrong.
Not a logical fallacy at all. When we are discussing a constitutional matter, it can often be entirely appropriate to note how a matter was treated during the time that Constitution was in force.
Moto has a point on that one. If the idea behind it is “if there are restraints on assembly, they may be followed by further restraints/a perversion of those restraints”, then it’s perfectly reasonable to use the history of similar restraints to show there has been no escalation. It’s not an appeal to tradition, it’s disproving that one situation leads to another by citing precedent.
I agree that free speech zones aren’t a particularly elegant solution, but they similarly attempt to balance the right of various groups to assemble and express themselves freely.
Having been on both sides of the fence, literally, on that one, I’m curious how that turns out myself.
But that’s not what you argued. You argued that “We’ve been doing this for a while now”, the antecedant of “this” presumably being the application of restrictions. What you were arguing then is a method of reasoning. What you are arguing now is a jurisprudential process — I suppose a sort of stare decisis. It’s fine by me if you want to base decisions on precedent as a matter of constitutional process, but if you argue that there’s nothing wrong with the process because we’ve always done it that way, then your argument fails.