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Yes, Homeowner’s Associations are evil, but this man freely purchased a home and agreed to abide by the association’s rules.
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This isn’t about whether he can fly a flag, it’s about the flagpole he installed on which to fly his flag.
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Private organizations are not constitutionally bound to permit free speech. There’s no difference between dictating which colors you may not paint your house, dictating what flags may be flown and how, and banning political billboards on their property.
Could he have bought the house he wanted without signing the homeowner’s contract?
I mean, I’m asking. I don’t know from house-buying.
A careful reader may have discerned that I indicated that the FLACLU had not opined on campaign signs hanging from 12-foot poles when I said, “I’m unaware whether the FLACLU would have been OK with a homeowner’s association restriction on a huge campaign sign suspended from a 12-foot pole.” My only point is that the FLACLU does not apparently believe that the “rights” of a community association to enter into agreements with its members are absolute, as some in this thread appear to have indicated.
Yes, the issue is the pole. That doesn’t suddenly make it not an issue (though it may, as I indicated, make it an issue on which the FLACLU might reasonably take a pass – time, place and manner and all that). He may also have signed an agreement in writing not to affix a satellite dish to his house. The Florida legislature (and perhaps the federal legislature) may abrogate that deal nonetheless if it sees it as an abrogation of public policy. I was just backin’ up Bricker.
No, he couldn’t. It’s a pre-condition for buying them. In one sense, he is buying membership in a private organization, which owns certain of the property (usually the structure and the common grounds) in common. He gets to vote for the people who run the club and make the rules. He probably gets his lawn cut and all exterior maintenance handled. There may be common ownership of things like playgrounds, tennis courts or swimming pools. The individual “owns” the interior of the place, usually the inner walls, the appliances and so on. Part of the deal is a set of existing rules that he agrees to follow.
I used to own a condo. One of the rules was that the outside of the draperies had to be white.
It all sounds utterly Orwellian to me.
You plop down good money, and go in debt for 30 years, and you can’t do what you want with the place. It makes no sense to me. And it’s not that I don’t know all the arguments (property taxes, pleasant neighborhood experience, yada yada yada) I still think it’s all stupid.
Why, the ACLU ought to do something about this!
So, don’t buy into one.
BTW, it’s really very similar when you rent, you know. The landlord will have rules that you have to follow, too.
I wouldn’t, if I could swing it.
But condo’s and complexes aside, why, if I want to buy that cute little raised cape on the corner do I have to agree to not paint my house flourescent pink and not park my Pacer on the front lawn?
If my neighbors don’t like it, they can move.
That “if you don’t like it, don’t do it” argument swings two ways.
As for the renting thing … that’s a different bundle of laundry. I don’t own what I rent, so of course I have to abide by the rules of the owner.
Can you please indicate when the ACLU was asked to legally defend this person and refused? Can you show that the ACLU is even aware of this situation?
But most importantly, can you not pretend like this is about this nitwit flag-fucker’s supposed “right” to fly a flag when he clearly already has the right to fly one from the appropriate brackets?
Take a fucking pill, Otto. I’m not filing a legal brief here, I’m stating an opinion.
Obviously, judging by the OP, this “cause” has a conservative bent. Whether it’s flags or flag poles or brackets or jackets or whatever … in my opinion not being able to do what you want to do on your own property sounds like something that the ACLU might be likely to stick up for. And I’d like to see them stick up for all Americans not just the liberal ones like me.
I don’t know if the ACLU was called, or if they even know about this situation, but if they do wouldn’t it be keen for them to back this guy. For one thing, then the uber-right-wingers would have a leg kicked out from under them on the pinko-red-commie-ACLU arguments.
Jack, you may want to check out What’s A Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing in the ACLU?
I’m constantly amazed that conservatives don’t support an organization that protects their freedoms.
Yeah, the Klan in Skokie is quite the liberal bunch for the ACLU to be supporting. The ACLU’s opposition to hate crime and hate speech laws put them four-square with the liberal darlings. Bob-freakin-Barr is an ACLU consultant, fer cri-yi.
The ACLU defends the civil liberties of every American. A decision upholding the right of A to free speech also guarantees B that same right regardless of where A and B fall on the political spectrum. This dispute is over a term in a private contract freely entered into by two consenting parties. Where is the issue for the ACLU? Just because it involves a flag doesn’t automatically make it a constitutional question. Should the ACLU jump in to defend the “right” to strew washing machine parts across one’s lawn when one has contractually agreed not to? That the ACLU has been made the target in this thread is ridiculous and stupid.
Yes.
Well, not exactly, but they ought to defend the right to not be required to sign those contracts in order to purchase a house.
Those contracts infringe on personal rights, in my opinion.
This is what I’m getting at and I don’t give a flying fig if the guy want’s to fly Old Glory or the Jolly Roger on his 300 foot flag poll.
Interesting take, Jack. However, the ACLU doesn’t take cases involving two private entities. There’d have to be a suit against a law allowing them or somesuch.
But I’m your same boat, I know nothing of homeownership and the like.
This attitude drives me crazy. I’ve heard so many people rail against the ACLU for what they don’t do. They’re a private organization subsidized by donations to try to fight for citizen’s civil liberties. They do this by defending unpopular forms of expression, or the civil liberties of unpopular people. You know why? Because those are the easiest forms of expression and rights to curtail, and the truest tests of whether we really believe in free speech and civil liberties. Disagree with their strategy? Feel free to subsidize a different organization that defends your freedoms in a manner you find more effective. You’re not entitled to their help, any more than you are entitled to demand that the Sierra Club help weed your garden.
Demanding that the ACLU spend resources defending someone’s rights to say they love America, as many ACLU critics often do, is stupid. Not because the ACLU doesn’t want people to be able to say they love this country, but because there are no shortage of people and groups who will eagerly step up to defend that case. That right is in no danger of being curtailed. To infer from their choice of cases that the ACLU loves flag-burners and pedophiles but hates patriotism and loving families is moronic.
Disclaimer: this is not aimed at you specifically Jack. Your comment was just representative of what I view as a common attitude that drives me crazy.
“Free speech” only applies to protection from interference of speech by a governmental entity. People can and do willingly sign away their free speech rights in many situations when agreeing to live by the rules of non-governmental organizations. Like this gentleman did.
If he wants to fly the flag on a big pole, he should run for the presidency of the homeowner’s association and fight to change the rule. He has no free speech grounds for a suit.
There is no right to buy a house. If a homeowner doesn’t want to sign a HOA contract then the time to try to do something about it is before the contract is signed. If he didn;t like the terms of the contract then he shouldn’t have signed it. This guy signed the contract with full knowledge of the terms and conditions, and he thinks he should get special treatment because the breach involves waving the American flag. Fuck that. People have every right in the world to sign away their rights in a private contract. My employment contract specifies standards of conduct which infringe on my free speech rights every day. If I hadn’t been willing to allow that abridgement I could have declined to enter into the contract. Should the ACLU come running to my “defense” if I get fired for saying something improper to a customer? Of course not. Just because a contract infringes upon one’s rights doesn’t mean that there’s necessarily anything wrong with the contract.
Dig this, though, Otto.
If it were the same guy who was getting all this shit for putting a rainbow banner in his front window, most of us liberals would be screaming for blood.
The same knee-jerk we see when some consersatives who cry foul around issues of “flag-waving” is reciprocated by some liberals who think that when the issue of the flag comes up it’s automatically nothing but jingoism.
I really can’t speak to all the legal fine points of Home Owners Associations as I’m not a home owner, and I’m not really planning on becoming one. All I can say is that the general idea of having to agree to others’ stipulations in order to do what you want on your own property (within reason … I don’t think you should be able do hang dead neighborhood cats from your tree or shit like that) is abhorrant to me.
Jack, it’s not your property until you sign the agreement, so it’s not a forced matter. You can choose to buy other property not within the constraints of a HOA.
Yes, Munch, I know that. I’m not claiming that HOA’s don’t exist – I’m claiming that they shouldn’t.
Everything is perfect about the lot and house I’m looking at and that’s the property I want and it’s my dream home and all of that … but I have to sign an agreement that I can’t put up a pink flamingo on my front lawn?
If I have what it takes to be able to buy a piece of property and a house that costs a great deal of money, then nobody should be able to tell what I can and can’t do there.