1st amendment rights

[dirty dog]

Originally Posted by john_galt

I go with the idea of erecting a Port a John over the Phelps grave. Other than that I do like the protesting the funeral idea.

Someone should just burn the church down, Galt dont your people have some experiance with that?

[joshinlawrence]

While I think all of those phelps assholes should be thrown in jail, what they do is constitutionally protected. Their protesting is completely legal. If the Supreme Court was to decide that what they did was unconstitutional, it would open up doors to shut down media, opinions and free speech as we know it. It is a very slippery slope, and even though I would never condone anything the Phelps clan stands for, it would be a slap in the face of freedom of speech if they were to be shut down.

[sipapi]

True beauty of our democracy. We come to protect the rights of whom we despise the most. I love our constitution that we support someone with whom we completely disagree.

Don't know if I believe in the whole "what God thinks", but I do hope that Karma has large, dry cock to shove up his ass, but then again as COG suggested, I would bet he is as gay as an MTV reality show. Short of that, the best way to handle a bully is to completely ignore, he gets power from all the exposure. If an asshole spews hate in a forest, does he make a sound?

[lacrew_2000]

This case is not about the legality of Phelp's speech. It is about a civil lawsuit. The government's involvement in the case is tangental. One private party sued another private party, claiming he was damaged by his speech. A jury of private individuals awarded damages. The government's only involvement is that it 'hosted' these events in a courtroom, and the enforcement of the judgement would be through the government.

This is very different than a city passing a law prohibiting free speech (although those already exist in profanity and hate crime legislation).

The crux of the matter is who gets to decide what harm is done by malicious speech. The appeals court came up with the notion that malicious speech had to be false to actually harm somebody. Most talking heads on the radio don't think this is a valid test, so they think the SCOTUS could just remand it back to them....however, they also think the SCOTUS might not do that, and actually make a decision, to clarify the matter.

The Phelps group seems to realize that there is precedent against them...so they are arguing that the marine was a 'public figure'. His death was announced in the paper, he was on the public payroll when he died, etc. That's a stretch, since 'public figure' means politician or movie star. If that's the best they've got, they very well may lose this case.

Anyway, I hear discussions of this case through the lens of legality of speech...and this is not about that. It is about who gets to decide what type of speech rises to the threshold of actually damaging another.

A recent example would be the Rutgers suicide, because a roomate posted a sex tape of him. You can bet his family will successfully sue, even though the roomate had the 'freedom of speech' to display the tape. Why? Because the family can easily demonstrate damage (death). Same goes for several high profile cyber bullying cases which resulted in suicide. There is no question that speech can rise to a damaging level...but who gets to draw the line?