Now, why would you do this, Liberal, after accusing me of employing a logical fallacy earlier in the thread?
This saddens me a great deal.
Then what did you mean by legal justification? What does the law justify?
What you did by saying this:
was to oversimplify my position in gross terms and then attempt to refute it by picking the most extreme examples you could find.
There is a word for that kind of debating tactic. And given your hypervigilance earlier in the thread for logical fallacies, frankly I found it surprising.
If I misunderstood you, you have the opportunity to clarify. (Second request.) Why do you offer “legal and constitutional justification” as weight in your favor when neither the law nor the constitution justifies anything?
What a great post! Clearly stated (to most) and well supported. I can’t help but reflect back on the tactics used by the Nazi Party in the late 1930’s where Brown Shirts would attend any meeting of those opposed to their position and shout down the speakers and intimidate the attendees. I can’t help but wonder who here would have been among the freedom-to-say-whatever-you-want-to-whomever-you-want-whenever-you-want citizens in the pre-war Germany that allowed the Nazis to come to power.
Should the Nazis of today or the KKK be allowed to speak their views publicly? Without a doubt. Should they be allowed to prevent public speakers with opposing views to be heard? Definitely not. Their freedom does not supersede my own.
If Phelps wants to have a tent revival for the morally impaired then he is free to get a permit and rent a public field or hall and spew all the vile tripe he wishes to those that have elected to put themselves within ear-shot. He should not be allowed to set up on the right-of-way in front of my house and disrupt my life because I disagree with him.
If I wish to raise pigs and chickens in my backyard, I am prevented from doing so because the smell and noise, while not bothersome to me, would be offensive to those have the right not to be subjected to these things. If I wish to be involved in the production of that which stinks, I must choose a place appropriate for such activities.
So must Phelps and his ilk.
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I do not accept the asserted equivalence between someone’s private residence and a public funeral. As I have said before, a military funeral, if held in public, is in itself public political speech. It is not comparable to living a quiet life at home. It is eminently fair to allow a competing message to be conveyed at the same time and place. It has already been stated that the “talking” part of the funeral takes place indoors, where the Phelps gang can’t be heard. If it’s the case that Phelps is not actually shouting down someone trying to give a eulogy (or whatever), then the “speech” of the funeral is not being interfered with.
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The idea that Phelps’s activities is a real threat to the public peace is a bunch of macho hooey.
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This sentence makes absolutely zero sense:
Cite for where Phelps has prevented anyone from speaking in public?
I do not believe that it is so. Sorry.
I believe the law states that funerals are private affairs to which the public may be invited upon the request of the organizers, typically the family. In the case of a “military funeral” the government’s involvement is actually quite limited, and consists of benefits provided directly to the veteran or surviving family. Such benefits are generally a flag, a tombstone, a burial plot in some cases, rendering of military honors (oftentimes by veterans groups, and not the actual active duty military) and in limited circumstances a cash benefit.
Therefore, protesting the government by picketing a “military funeral” is akin to protesting that same government by picketing a Social Security recipient. While I regard this as the ultimate in folly, I do respect the right to express such.
Such expression can be made across town, or after the funeral is over, or over the airwaves, or in door-to-door canvassing. Restricting the right to protest during the actual protest does not mean that the right to expression is in any way infringed.
So if you concede that other events may deserve the same rights, then why don’t you agree that all protests should be restricted in the same manner as funeral protests?
Bolding mine. What act of force or violence does a funeral protest intend to commit?
The Patriot Guard riders do not have to come. They actually don’t come to non-military funerals being protested, as I think has been established.
Again, you haven’t explained why funeral protests are different from “normal” protests, or why the Phelps people should be treated differently from “normal” political organizations, other than the fact that they’re “vile.”
I agree that Phelps wouldn’t be the target of legislation if he didn’t protest funerals. That’s exactly why people know about him-- because he exercises his right to protest in this manner, and very successfully. But people don’t care that his mere presence disrupts funerals; they object to his message. That’s why the law specifically targets protests.
If our society truly regarded funerals as necessarily sacrosanct, there would be no need for this law, because cemeteries would already be built with an enormous sound perimeter to shield them from any disruption. Instead, many cemeteries are surrounded by traffic-clogged multilane thoroughfares, or in residential areas, with only a cast iron fence between them. Why aren’t construction, traffic, or other ambient sounds around cemeteries already illegal?
First of all, however offensive traffic noise may be, it isn’t screaming “God hates fags.”
Secondly, the dead, as far as we know, are past caring, which is why all of these laws do not restrict Fred Phelps from protesting all he wants, even at that cemetery, after the funeral is over.
And if I haven’t adequately addressed the very different nature of funerals as opposed to other meetings, gatherings, or rallies, it is because most of us understand the human need to mourn, and value this as a society, and wish to accommodate such. Indeed, we all recognize this in this thread, so don’t play dumb and ask why funerals need special protection. You might as well ask why the hearse gets to run red lights.
Mr. Moto, you keep saying, “sorry, I don’t agree,” but what your arguments amount to are a severe devaluing of free speech. The one thing that a legitimate restriction on free speech cannot be based on is protecting other people from being offended.
Regardless of whether it is “folly,” does the law restrict someone from standing outside the Social Security office and protest while recipients and applicants go in and out?
This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. By restricting the right to protest at the time and place the protester chooses, you are denying him or her the full impact of his or her political message.
You can say anything you want, so long as you say it while sitting inside a large steel oil drum 100 yards from the nearest building. Can you see how your effective message is, in fact, being denied? Denying someone the use of public property to engage in speech, especially if it sends a message to those who hear it, in order to protect the listeners from being offended really can’t be justified by a valid constitutional argument.
I’m not playing dumb. Funerals don’t need special protection. Period. They can be held in a private place–and for the most part they are. Until the commercialisation of the funeral industry, most people held funerals in their own homes. People can mourn in private. Any public interest in helping people mourn is outweighed by the fundamental right of free speech.
Letting hearses run red lights does not interfere with anyone’s fundamental rights.
Maybe you’re on to something there. Can we put the Republican National Convention out in the New Mexico desert out of earshot?
I’ll stop asking why funerals need special protection when you get around to giving a straight answer. First you claimed that funerals need special protection because the funeralgoers’ First Amendment rights are being infringed (in some unspecified manner). You then suggested that funeral protests intend to commit violence (in some unspecified manner). Now you claim that the law is necessary because of the universal human need to mourn, which is being uniquely violated by these protests (in some unspecified manner) and thus suddenly deserving of unique blanket protection at this critical moment in history. Have I missed any? So far, though, you haven’t expanded on any of these arguments, or offered any clear reason for treating funeral protests any differently from any other kind of protest, other than that they’re more icky.
Then there was your whole hand-waving side argument about how rights are always subject to regulation, as if that somehow magically conferred an aura of legitimacy on this particular regulation. However, I believe that the regulation of rights has traditionally been accompanied by some sort of actual argument about why that particular regulation is necessary, not just “oh, well we’ve done this sort of thing before.” There has to be a good and specific reason, which neither you nor anyone else has offered so far. I’m not saying that pointless and grossly discriminatory laws have never been enacted before, just that they’re not desirable in general.
Certainly that is so. But there is nothing that says that if, for instance, a group of antiabortion protesters were to decide to storm the stage of the Democratic National Convention and have a protest just as Hillary Clinton wanted to speak in prime time, that we should all just fold our hands and let them do so.
You seem to want to give them that right, just because that would maximize the impact and they chose that time and place.
I choose that particular example because you are arguing in your posts that “military funerals” are a quasi-public event. A stronger point could be made about the political conventions, which are funded in part by massive amounts of federal money.
So, straight answer time. If those protesters storm the stage at the convention, should they be arrested?
Haven’t they been having the Libertarian Conventions there already? 
I’m puzzled at how sure you are when you state these false comparisons.
Have I asserted that Phelps should be allowed to invade the church, run up to the altar, knock aside anyone who is speaking, and shout his message into the P.A. system? Because that is parallel to your example of the party convention. Convention protesters should not be allowed to prevent people from coming and going into the convention hall (a private space), but should be allowed to say anything they want at the most impactful time and location (when and wherever they choose) outside.
The same with Phelps. So long as he physically stays off of private property that he does not have permission to enter and he does not physically interfere with the participants, he is legitimately exercising his rights. And shouting at someone who’s walking from church to car is not physical interference.
Do you have any idea how restrictions on political speech are evaluated? Can you give me your analysis regarding how to apply strict scrutiny to the restrictions you’re proposing?
I’ll be happy to try.
First of all, there is a confusion in this thread between public spaces and areas appropriate for public expression. Most posters seem to think they are one and the same. But a moment’s thought shows that this is not the case, and the case law is quite clear on this point - the public space may be managed by law so that public expression may occur at a time or place appropriate to such.
In Grayned v. City of Rockford, the Court upheld a ban on noisemakers at demonstrations in the vicinity of a school where class was in session. This is one of the most similar cases I could find to the ban on noisy funeral demonstrations - and the one that convinces me most of its constitutionality. The Court found that “the ordinance is not vague since, with fair warning, it prohibits only actual or imminent, and willful, interference with normal school activity, and is not a broad invitation to discriminatory enforcement. The ordinance is not overbroad as unduly interfering with First Amendment rights since expressive activity is prohibited only if it ‘materially disrupts classwork.’”
So here we have a case where protests are restricted (not banned, but restricted) in such a way as to not interfere with the rights of others. I have no doubts similar considerations will come into play if the law being discussed is ever challenged in court.
If you have any opinions on why the government may protect students from a noisy demonstration, but not mourners, I’d love to hear it.
I’m no lawyer, if that’s what you’re asking. If you want the nuts and bolts of all of this, you’ll have to give me a few years and several thousand dollars.
The long and short of it is that the restrictions may not be excessive and must be content neutral. Now, I’m sure people will argue both points, especially since the only organization that has shown itself to be so classless as to do such a thing happens to hold a certain worldview. But there you go.
No. That’s not the long and the short of it. The long and the short of it is that a restriction on political speech must:
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Substantially advance a compelling governmental interest. I would say that protecting funeralgoers from hearing or seeing any offensive messages while passing by some protesters who did not shout down the funeral’s speakers is not a compelling governmental interest.
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Be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.
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There must be no less restrictive means that would substantially advance that interest.
Again, a sentence that I don’t understand.
Who are you to judge? You don’t seem to regard the rights of the bereaved as regarding protection quite as strongly as, say, I do. Which of us is right?
Well, again, we let the legislative branch draft these laws, don’t we? And we know where they stand in this particular case - by overwhelming majorities, I might add. Now, this isn’t the final word on the subject, no, but it is an important consideration, you will admit.
The federal law seems as narrowly drawn as the Grayned v. City of Rockford precedent. And again, I have to ask you, why may the government protect schoolchildren from a noisy demonstration but not a funeral?
In this case, I can see no less restrictive way that would do so.