Not so. You have every right to order the man to stay off your property, and to have him arrested for trespassing if he fails to do so.
- Rick
You need a cop to keep an old neighbor guy out of your house?
This helpless act of yours isn’t supporting your case. If you won’t take even the most trivial steps to protect your own rights (i.e. not letting your neighbor in any more), why do you want the government to do it for you?
Sounds like a waste of tax dollars to me.
I don’t appreciate it when people falsify what I’ve written. I wrote that a person who fails to obey your instruction to stay off your property is committing trespass and may be arrested
That is to say, regardless of content.
I even boldfaced it. I am hard-pressed to come up with a benign explanation for your misstatement of what I wrote. Kindly explain how you “erred.”
Start drafting that apology. In no reported case, state or federal, have I found an attempted prosecution of proseletyzing as racketeering.
And you know why? PROSELETYZING IS NOT RACKETEERING. It is speech protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Aww, the hell with it. pseudotriton ruber ruber, if you come back with yet another variation on this inane and false analogy, or falsify what I have written here, my next response to you will be found in the Pit.
Sua
Gasp you said the H-word.
Now he’ll sic RICO on your ass.
I’m returning here to note, briefly, that in Googling “racketeering” and “proselytize” and other assorted terms, I’ve turned up a LOT of stuff that I’ve been (very slowly) reading through to discover if there’s any legitimacy to the points I’ve been wondering about here, which you kind people have been helping me sort out. (Many of the hits seem to be about Scientology, which has faced rackeetering charges, largely abroad, and largely non-proseletyzing related.)
Sua, may I make a suggestion that might help you manage your time and energies?: instead of answering me, here or in the Pit, why not just try to ignore my foolishness or out-and-out stupidity? I don’t have a dog in this fight, nor do I actually have an annoying neighbor, a fire-alarm guy, or skidmarks on my BVDs. IA(quite obviously)NAL, and if it takes me some repetition to figure out how I’ve misconstrued some basic legal principles, well, that’s how ignorance gets fought. (SOMEbody has to supply the ignorance, right?) If I’m annoying you, I’d appreciate it if you’d just stop answering rather than engaging me in needlessly hostile discourse. If it annoys you to explain principles of legal thought that you seem to understand, why bother explaining them to me anymore?
I’ve gotten to understand in this thread some principles of law I hadn’t considered before, like whether proseletyzing
is primarily about religious freedom or freedom of speech, what parameters we put on speech, etc., and it’s been valuable for that.
One legal principle I seem not to understand is the one where lawyers argue stuff that seems to a layman to involve extremely, tortuously, almost absurdly, narrow or even silly definitions of terms, and to insist on using those definitions exclusively in arguing their points. I DON’T quite see how proseletyzing is self-evidently not racketeering. I can see the strong argument you’re making against that usage, Sua, and it has a lot of merit, while my usage is radical and strange, and maybe totally inapplicable. But I’ll have to ask you to forgive me if I want to learn if my idea is unsupportable. Your vote on that question has been recorded.
IANAL but,
prr, the reason for language “that seems to a layman to involve extremely, tortuously, almost absurdly, narrow or even silly definitions of terms, and to insist on using those definitions exclusively” is that exactitude in what is being addressed is essential to any highly specialized discipline dealing with sensitive issues. In regards specifically to Law we do not want our fundamental rights (in the case of criminal law, maybe our very life) to depend on vague understandings or common popular usages.
(But the need for precision also applies to medicine, engineering, theology and numerous other and disciplines)
OTOH, in politics it’s obviously accepted to appeal to inexact general consensus – yet as of now, the political general consensus in our society is that proselytizing in and of itself is no threat to the stability of society, unless it becomes abusive – and the definition of “abusive” is NOT up to you. So, society determines that persistent proselytizers aren’t guilty of anything other than “being inconvenient to your Yuppie lifestyle”, and you also lose on that front. At least until your theory about the inevitable triumph of progress over religion shows any effect.
Oh, and the doddering old neighbor who is totally innocuous, nonthreatening but annoying regardless? YES YOU CAN charge him with trespassing or request a restraining order if he won’t go away.
But I do. I’m not trying to fight your ignorance, I’m trying to fight the readers of this thread’s ignorance.
You aren’t misconstruing the legal principles here; you are ignoring them. The relevant legal principle has been set forth for you - the ‘compelling state interest’ test. It was set forth a long time ago, yet you have not yet tried to argue what compelling state interest is threatened by proseletiyzing. Instead, you keep posting hypotheticals that all deal with trespass - which ain’t a free speech issue. That is what is annoying me about what you are doing. Address the relevant issues, please.
That’s like going on a football field and complaining when the referee’s start applying the rules of football. You are dealing with an issue of law, therefore those “silly definitions” are the only relevant definitions.
The only thing that means is that you do not know what racketeering is.
Racketeering is not proseletyzing, by definition. If someone is engaged in racketeering, that person is not proseletyzing. If someone is proseletyzing, that person is not engaged in racketeering.
The reason this is so is because a person engaged in racketeering is engaged in an illegal act, and a person engaged in proseletyzing is engaged in a legal act.
There is no overlap between the two - the same action cannot be proseletyzing and racketeering at the same time.
Ya see, it ain’t up for a vote. When you are told that pi equals 3.14…, that’s not an “strong argument” that pi equals 3.14… - it’s a statement of fact. And when you come back and say, “well, can’t pi equal 3?,” you are not asserting a “radical and strange” theory; you are simply wrong.
And any way you try to argue that proseletyzation is racketeering, you are simply wrong.
Sua
Pseudotriton, it’s not at all difficult to grasp the idea that a person may be convinced that he has something of value to you, whether it be a great new stock issue or the Words of Everlasting Life or the dangers of giant meteor impacts, and that you may choose not to be interested in what he is convinced you ought to want to hear about.
If he persists in annoying you with his terrific deal, regardless of the content of that deal, after being told to stop, you have every right to accuse him of harassment and obtain the services of the law in compelling him to stop.
Bottom line.
Until you have assaulted me with your views and I have told you to stop, your right to freedom of speech (and perhaps freedom of association) trumps my possible right to be protected from your views. When I have heard your views and tell you to stop, the shoe moves to the other foot, and my right to privacy trumps your right to continue expressing your views to an unwilling audience.
Regardless of what you’re selling and what anybody else may think of it.
I could offer Sua Sponte a quitclaim deed to my interest in the Brooklyn Bridge, and so long as I make no representation of ownership beyond the offer to sell him whatever interest I may have in it, I’ve broken no law. But when he tells me to stop, because even $0.01 is too much for him to pay for such a deed, much less the $100 I’m asking, then I am obliged to stop or be liable to prosecution for harassment.
And if I’m trying to save him from eternal torture by seeking his averrance that he takes Jesus as Lord and Savior, there’s no material difference between that and my quitclaim deed. I can offer until he tells me to stop.
I think I may see where you’re coming from on racketeering – the point being that I will be subject to some form of major loss unless I buy, or buy into, your “product” (such as insurance against someone burning down my building). However, religious beliefs are not normally sold as “Hellfire insurance” – regardless that some people may have gotten the perspective that they are.
It’s even simpler than that, Polycarp. The argument being made is that a person who comes up to you and says, “Repent now/donate money/do whatever else to appease an angry god, or you will spend eternity in Hell,” is racketeering (well, actually, extortion, which is but one type of racketeering and may exist independently of racketeering).
It’s not, for a simple reason - the players involved.
When a mobster drops by your store and “suggests” you buy fire insurance, or your store will burn down, extortion has occurred because the express or implied threat is that the mobster or someone acting in concert with the mobster will burn the place down.
When a missionary drops by your home and “suggests” you repent, or your soul will burn down, there is no threat, express or implied, that the missionary or someone acting in concert with him will burn your soul down. God or Satan will do that, and the missionary has no control over either.
One cannot extort by threatening to do what one is unable to do or cause, and where the putative extortee knows or reasonably should know one cannot.
It is precisely the same as an insurance salesman coming to your house and saying, “buy flood insurance or a hurricaine will hit your house.” It is not reasonable for the homeowner to think that this insurance salesman controls where hurricaines hit, so the salesman is not extorting the homeowner.
Sua
Well, actually (and arguing very hypothetically here), that actually *makes * Pseudotriton’s case. It is no defense against a racketeering charge that the accused was simply acting as an agent of another who was the issuer of the “insurance” and would do the actual burning down if the insurance was not bought.
And the evangelist claims to be acting in God’s name…
Sua: if religion were a new phenomenon, and proselytizing only started to appear in mass quantities (like spam) a few years ago… there’d be no doubt that there would be a compelling state interest in regulating (not banning, just regulating) it. My point being that the only reason why it’s acceptable (yes, the only one), is due to laches. We’ve let this crap go on for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s unfortunately part of our tradition now, and all compelling state interests aside, to even talk of regulating proselytizing now would cause riots.
So, it’s more of an estoppel argument than a freedom of speech/religion argument.
If you don’t believe me, let me put it this way. If microsoft started knocking on everyone’s door to “convert” them to Windows XP and Microsoft Network - and they did it so incessantly that it became a nuisance, do you really think freedom of speech would save their conduct from being regulated? Hardly.
Religious Direct Marketing (aka proselytizing) has special protection that other direct marketing doesn’t have, and never will acquire.
Anybody besides me think of AOL floppy disks and CDs when they read this? 
Actually, I see nothing wrong with people coming to your house and trying to convert you to WXP or Linux or Gamecube. The current laws deal with it regardless of what they are trying to “sell” you, and that’s the important point. Their actions, coming on your property, repeated solicitations after being told to leave, threat of force, are regulated currently. But not their speech, it doesn’t matter what they are saying unless their speech involves threats.
Why do you get the idea that religious conversion is somehow different or more damaging that any other attempt to convince someone of a point? No one has the right not to be exposed to ideas, unless you are threatened or harassed. Until that point, the speech is protected. After that point, it is not. What they are trying to say is irrelevant.
Well, I don’t believe you, because your premise is bullshit and has already been dismissed in this thread. How do you think someone becomes a “public nuisance”? Magic? Elves? Clicking their heels three times?
At some stage, someone who feels annoyed has to make a complaint of some sort, and only then can the state intercede and apply laws meant to restrict public nuisances. Nothing is a public nuisance until someone says “I am annoyed by this”. You seem to be arguing for some kind of prior restraint, and that runs counter to the letter and spirit of freedom of expression laws.
If Microsoft went on an aggressive door-to-door campaign, sooner or later someone will probably complain but until that happens, Microsoft should be allowed the full exercise of its civil rights, as should any other person or legal entity.
So if somone is hassling you, whether to sell you a new Windows system or eternal life, get off your lazy ass and call the cops. The trespassing and harassment laws are already on your side. What more do you want? A lollypop and a security blanket?
WHAT compelling state interest? C’mon guys, it can’t be that hard – if y’all are so convinced that a vital governmental interest will be severely or irrevocably harmed by proseletyzing, it shouldn’t be so hard to name that interest.
That is simply untrue. Proseletyzing is acceptable because it is speech.
What is speech? The expression of ideas. Do you deny that a person who is proseletyzing is expressing ideas? You may not like the ideas expressed, but they are ideas.
You may think that. You are wrong.
Um, actually, there are companies that already do that: Amway and Avon spring to mind. The “regulations” on them are trespass and harrassment laws, which we have already discussed, and which apply to all who knock on your door for whatever reason.
In any event, your analogy is inapt - commercial entities have lessened free speech rights than do individuals, as commercial entities are not citizens.
That’s not true. Ecological Direct Marketing (aka Greenpeace), Political Direct Marketing (aka “vote for me”), etc. all have exactly the same protection that Religious Direct Marketing (aka proselytizing) does. It’s called the First Amendment.
All of them have more protection than Commercial Direct Marketing, becauses commercial speech has less protection than speech you and I may make.
Sua