With regard to “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” very generally speaking must be tied to an actual physical injury. Upsetting someone with words isn’t enough.
I don’t see how Phelps interferes with their right to worship, speech, or assembly. There is no First Amendment right not to be annoyed.
I think those violate our First Amendment rights as well. There is no freedom of speech if you’re restricted to exercising it only where no one can hear you.
There is no right to disrupt an event. Start singing during a movie, and you’ll be asked to leave and/or arrested if you refuse. (Rocky Horror style audience participation things excepted)
For that matter, there is no right to an audience. You can say whatever you want…within certain limits…but nobody has to listen.
For the “Free Speech Zones”, anyone interested can go listen to whatever is being said. People not interested can go on about their business of nominating candidates and such.
There is a hell of a lot of space between “disrupting” an event and restricting “free speech” to remote locations as was done at our conventions. So far as I am concerned, people have a constitutional right to speak right up to the entrance door of an event, so long as there is a pathway for individuals entering and exiting. They do not have the right to be protected from hearing the speakers, regardless of what they have to say.
So you have no problems with abortion protesters screaming hellfire and damnation at women entering a clinic? Even when such abuse may intimidate the women from exercising their own legal rights?
If you’re going to introduce the concept of intimidation then that changes things, doesn’t it? Show me that people would be intimidated from attending a political convention by the antics of 9/11 truthers outside a convention door. But, you know, actually show that such intimidation exists, like abortion clinics have had to do in court.
It’s a difficult line. The biggest problem I have with abortion protesters being able to get too close isn’t the mean things they might say (though I consider all abortion protesters to be reprehensible, frankly), but that some abortion protesters have, in the past, gone beyond words to violence.
Insults are fine. Threats are not fine. And obviously violence is not fine.
If Phelps yells at me can I drown him out with my freedom of speech?
there are laws regarding disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, and disorderly conduct.
Why not?
And all of these are balanced against genuine exercise of free speech. Is Phelps preventing people from sleeping at night or starting a riot? Disorderly conduct is not based on simply saying things in a public place that others find objectionable.
Suppose it isn’t the troofers. Suppose it’s robed klansmen outside the door of one of Obama’s events. You and I would point and laugh at those clowns. Others would find their presence more than a little intimidating.
Not the point. This code section specifically protects three (or more) types of meetings. Unless you are telling me that every other type of legal meeting receives the same protection elsewhere in the code, which I highly doubt, then Church meetings are being separated out for special protection. Which is endorsement. For the same reasons, by the way, I oppose laws banning the carrying of guns in Church and zoning laws banning strip clubs from operating within a certain distance of a Church.
Because one interferes with the other. A funeral is a specific event where people congregate in a singular effort to console each other and pay tribute to the deceased. Interrupting that process disturbs the peace of the event. Phelps has the right to be heard but he doesn’t have the right to force other people to listen to him. The difference is that unless a funeral is the only place on the planet Phelps can stand he is able to speak his peace without interrupting the lives of others. Like the church he preaches at.
I would object to people surrounding his church and generally being assholes to the congregation. Free speech was intended as the ability to speak freely and exchange ideas. It was not designed as a tool of harassment. We have laws regarding the general peace of our surroundings. The modern interpretation of it by the Supreme Court is just that, an interpretation. They might as well have used an ouija board to channel the Founding Father’s intent.
No and yes, respectively. Unless you don’t count forcibly holding down harmless people who deign to get near your demonstration as a “riot”.
Suppose it is. You have to make a case that a specific act committed by a specific person is intimidating. You can’t just wave your hands and disappear every potential speaker in the fear that one of them might at some point in the future be intimidating.
You’re the one who keeps saying that no one has the right to be heard.
Nobody has to listen to him. There’s no reason why a funeral has to be held outdoors in a public place.
And from Phelps’s point of view, that’s exactly what he’s doing. It’s not my place to say he isn’t.
my last name is phelps-
that’s why I came in here.
The sad thing is I am probably related somehow…
While it’s nice to think of Phelps being bankrupted, I’m not sure that was the correct approach. If these people are breaking the law, then each protester should be individually arrested and have the book thrown at them. I’m not a fan of large groups as corporate identities. There are some times when actual people and not just the larger group they are a part of should be held accountable. The defamation part though I suppose is more of a lawsuit matter and less of a criminal matter.
I don’t see a problem with keeping the protesters out of the church or graveyards - that’s private property and if they encroach on that it’s trespassing. If they are blocking traffic or creating a noise disturbance those are arrestable offenses as well, independent of whatever their protest is about.
I don’t see a problem with curtailing paparazzi. That’s harassment. They can take their pictures from 100 feet away.
I am against so called ‘free speech zones’ though. Definitely political figures and businesses/institutions should have the least protection from speech related behavior.
then again, no one is suggesting that
In the grand scheme of things Phelps is a single mosquito in the jungle. I don’t think it’s worth creating a potentially dangerous precedent because of him.
I agree to some extent, but…
Rarely does anybody really intentionally inflict emotional distress on the Dope. Pitting another Doper is almost always insulting, but even in the Pit there are lines you don’t cross- I can’t wish death on a Doper (or even on most public figures) for instance.
Also, while I regard some Dopers as friends and a couple as decidedly “not friends”, we ultimately don’t really know each other- at best we’re a form of pen pals. If I start a JSGODDESS IS A [insulting expletives here] thread, I have no real way of knowing that you’re in a really depressed mood that day, or that you had to battle all the kids in elementary school calling you a [insulting expletives here] and it’s really touched a raw nerve, or that in the past 24 hours your cat scratched the kid in the bubble who lives next door and your favorite aunt just got arrested for morals charges and you just found out you’re pregnant with Clay Aiken’s baby due to a mixup at your last gynecology appointment and so you’re in a really raw and emotionally fragile mood that day.
Now if I DO know these things- you just posted a “Things that have happened in the last 24 hours that I’m in a raw and emotional fragile mood” thread and I read it and the pitting is in response to it, then I’m an asshole, no question, and my thread is definitely inflicting intentional emotional distress (herafter IIED). However, you have an option: don’t read it. Quit the Dope. You’re not- nobody is- required to read or participate in SDMB threads for their income or health (except maybe Ed- does anybody receive a lion’s share of their income from the Dope?). I had a famous at the time/hopefully forgotten now flame-out/meltdown over what was undeniably IIED some while back when my mother died. I stopped reading and stopped posting to the SDMB for a couple of months til, in the words of Buddy from NIGHT COURT, “I’m much better now”.
Now, if I start a website called JSGODDESS IS A [INSULTING EXPLETIVES HERE].COM, then… hmm. It’s a bit different. You’d be a remarkable human indeed if vanity and curiosity and self-interest didn’t absolutely compel you to log on and see what I’ve said. Now, if on that site it’s nothing but my Pit style ramblings and rantings on “10 More Things I Hate About jsgoddess” and “Things I Imagine She Does in her Spare Time With Strangers She Picks Up at the Bus Station”, then- no matter how vile (and I’m using you hypothetically obviously- I really don’t think you’re a [insulting expletives here] and I honestly have no idea what you do with the strangers you pick up at the bus station), I think it should be protected by First Amendment. I’m expressing my opinions and my viewpoints and even to some degree I’m protected from exaggeration and embellishment.
On the other hand, if on that site I say “jsgoddess’s real name is Manitoba Cumi Jenks and her address is 4321 Birthing Chair Lane, Chestnut Creek AL, and her home phone number is 987-654-3210”, and that information is really correct, THEN you have recourse. Since you’re not (presumably) a public figure, I’ve invaded your privacy, and that is NOT protected by free speech, at least to my understanding. (Of course if your name and address are published info I might be in a gray area.)
Further, if I make threats against you- “I’m going to go to her house and set fire to her lawn ornaments”- that’s not protected. Libel- “I think jsgoddess is the true killer of Nicole Simpson” (and it’s clear I’m really accusing you and not being hyperbolic), you have recourse- that’s not protected. Unless I do these things though, if I just maintain a website talking about my hatred of you and why I think you’re going to burn in hell and all that crap ala Fred Phelps, even if I’m dead serious, I’m not harassing you. You don’t HAVE to look at my website.
However, in The Waking the rules are different. There are times and places when you do NOT have an option of getting away from me. A funeral for example: if a loved one dies and I’m picketing the funeral, I may be fully within my rights as to what I’m saying about you or the deceased, but… I can say it anywhere I want to, while you don’t really have a choice about where you go to the funeral. You can’t really say “I don’t want to put up with that jackass today… I’ll just go to another funeral instead of Uncle Ned’s and I’ll think about Uncle Ned when they light the bier”- no, your Hobson’s choice is either to go past my display or don’t go at all, neither an appealing option.
Also- if I’m a co-worker and I harangue you everyday at work- never threateningly, just telling you why I don’t like you, why I hate your clothes, why I think you’re a bad person and why you’re going to burn at hell, but never anything threatening or sexually harassing, perhaps only in the parking lot or the break room or wherever, I’m within my rights of free speech and you don’t really have the option of getting away from me unless you quit your job.
This reminds me of a comment of my mother’s. There used to be a PSA, I think from the Mormon’s, in which a child is being verbally abused. At the end the announcer says “Words… they hurt far more than a fist.”
My mother (a former lady wrestler and all around hellion when pissed) remarked “Whoever said that clearly doesn’t know how to throw a punch right.” (then a remark about the flying leg scissors in a fight with Mae Young).
However, my sentiments I must admit are more with the commercial. There are words that do far more damage than a blow ever will. While I think that 99.9999% of those should be legally protected, I do think there are some limits.
Incidentally, a child can be taken away from a home for emotional and verbal abuse even if there’s no physical abuse. I wonder how this gets around the parents’ right to free speech.
It would certainly bother me-that’s PRIVATE property, you do realize? Ditto, as was stated above by jackdavinci, churches and some cemetaries.
I don’t think they should be totally BANNED…but, however, if they’re protesting in such a way that disrupts or impedes the funeral, or the mourners, or such…I don’t know. They have, on occassion, I believe, come VERY close to harassment.
Probably a distance thing would work-as it does for Planned Parenthood. They have First Amendment rights-but only up until they start to infringe on MY rights. Which would be to free of HARASSMENT. (Not, distress or insults, per se. But last time I checked, harassment and assault ARE illegal)
From what I see, anymore it seems they are more like the kid who holds his finger right up against your face, about half an inch away, chanting, “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you!” Deliberately trying to get you to do something.
(I liked the Mister Rogers funeral idea-counter protesters followed them and drowned them out by singing songs from his show.)