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ACLU Represents Phelps

drkitten said:
To LA? As charming as the prospect of running away with you might be, I'd have to decline.

If I had a condominium in Los Angeles and a country home in the lowest plane of Hell, I'd simply sell the condo and move to the country.

But thank you anyway.
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No, no. We'd both be running away.

And just because it's been in the triple digits and there's locusts, doesn't mean it's that bad...
 
drkitten said:
How many of the local municipalities where Phelps is protesting are afraid to bust him because they don't think that the legislature will back them up? MO has sent a clear signal that the cops should enforce the law "aggressively" on Phelps and Phelps-like protestation.
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You seem to be assuming that Phelps has, in fact, broken existing laws in his protests. I doubt this is the case. As I noted above, there doesn't seem to be a case for harassment or slander against him (slander, by the way, is only a civil cause of action and not a crime). As Tricky pointed out, Phelps isn't exactly a sympathetic character, so I have to think that if there were a way to bust him for what he's been doing under existing law, the cops would have done it. Moreover, Phelps and many of his goons are apparently lawyers, so they probably know how to structure their protests to avoid breaking any laws.

drkitten said:
To LA? As charming as the prospect of running away with you might be, I'd have to decline.

If I had a condominium in Los Angeles and a country home in the lowest plane of Hell, I'd simply sell the condo and move to the country.

But thank you anyway.
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Well said. I spent a summer in L.A., interning for a law firm while I was in law school, and hated it. Even living a couple of blocks from the beach didn't make up for the traffic, smog, etc.
 
JamesDillon said:
Moreover, Phelps and many of his goons are apparently lawyers, so they probably know how to structure their protests to avoid breaking any laws.
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I'm so not surprised to hear that Phelps may be a lawyer. So this is all basically kabuki for him to end up with a Supreme Court case with his name on it. The People vs. Phelps.
 
Dave1001 said:
I'm so not surprised to hear that Phelps may be a lawyer. So this is all basically kabuki for him to end up with a Supreme Court case with his name on it. The People vs. Phelps.
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He's definitely a lawyer. The Wikipedia article on him has a bit about his legal career, including this gem:
By [1979], Phelps had more complaints filed against him for misconduct than any attorney in the history of the state of Kansas (and, some believe, the history of the United States).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rev._Fred_Phelps

He was disbarred shortly thereafter, but some of his children are practicing attorneys.
 
JamesDillon said:
You seem to be assuming that Phelps has, in fact, broken existing laws in his protests.
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I'm not. I'm specifically responding to what Tricky said:

Tricky said:
It might be considered harassment or slander by private individuals like yourself, but unless some legal authority agrees with you, then it's not. If it is determined to be harassment or slander, then there are already laws to take care of it..
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Tricky seems to be arguing that either Phelps' actions are not illegal (and therefore should not be illegitimated), or else they're already illegal (and no additional law are required). In either case, he's suggesting that the MO legislature acted inappropriately. I simply point out that this is a false dichotomy. They may well be illegal in some abstract Platonic sense, but no law enforcement agency/court has been able or willing to enforce the existing law against him. If this were the case, then the MO legislature has sent a clear and appropriate message about enforcing the old law in the process of creating the new.

I don't know enough about Phelps' exact conduct to have a relevant opinion about whether or not he's broken existing laws, and as you point out, he's a very smart lawyer with a practical specialization in First Amendment law, so I suspect he knows exactly how far he can push it.

Of course, the other possible resolution of Tricky's dilemma is to suggest that even if Phelps' conduct isn't illegal, it nevertheless should be. The right to free speech is never absolute, and there are lots of kinds of speechlike behavior that should be restricted. People just differ on what they are. My personal favorite is the general inability under US law to slander or libel a group. despite some case law to the contrary (e.g. BEAUHARNAIS v. ILLINOIS). In my opinion, defaminig a group can cause as much or more damage than defaming a specific individual, and we need dig no deeper than Krystallnacht to demonstrate that. I think that this thread demonstrates quite clearly that reasonable people can and do disagee on whether Phelps' actions should be criminalized, a variation on the question of whether society through its agent the state has a legitimate interest in preventing this kind of behavior.

Free speech theologians such as Tricky :

As long as the funeral protestors are obeying the same laws as people who picket in front of the UN (for example) then they deserve the same protection of the laws. That you find them highly offensive should make no difference.
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have little ground to stand on. There's a clear articulable difference between a (private) funeral service and a (public) entity like the UN; a funeral is not a political forum. If I find picketing at a funeral to be highly offensive, that difference alone is sufficient for me to write a constitutional place/time/manner restriction. I simply have to accept that this also means that good people can't protest at bad people's funerals, either -- but I consider the idea of "good people protesting at a funeral" to be an oxymoron, since good people just don't protest at funerals. That's part of how you can tell they're good people.
 
Dave1001 said:
Kansas, eh? So in his quest for legal immortality, he labors under the long shadow of William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial.
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Scopes was in Tennessee. You're probably thinking of the recent uproar about the Kansas Board of Education's revision of its science curriculum to allow the teaching of Intelligent Design. I'm sure Phelps approved of that one.
 
JamesDillon said:
Scopes was in Tennessee. You're probably thinking of the recent uproar about the Kansas Board of Education's revision of its science curriculum to allow the teaching of Intelligent Design. I'm sure Phelps approved of that one.
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Ah, yes. Please pardon my technopole-centric conflation of Tennessee and Kansas (probably caused by the recent uproar around the Kansas BOE).
 
drkitten said:
There's a clear articulable difference between a (private) funeral service and a (public) entity like the UN;
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Should Cindy Sheehan not be allowed to protest outside of Bush's ranch in Texas? There's a clear, articulable difference between the Crawford ranch and the White House.

And if she can't, then why is someone allowed to hold a memorial outside the hotel where Lennon was shot? That's a private business, too.

Memorial = OK
Protests = not allowed

is a bad policy in a free society.

a funeral is not a political forum. If I find picketing at a funeral to be highly offensive, that difference alone is sufficient for me to write a constitutional place/time/manner restriction. I simply have to accept that this also means that good people can't protest at bad people's funerals, either -- but I consider the idea of "good people protesting at a funeral" to be an oxymoron, since good people just don't protest at funerals. That's part of how you can tell they're good people.
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Depends on what you mean by funeral. If the KKK is using a "funeral" as a rally, then I see nothing morally or ethically wrong with protesting them. I can make the equal argument that "good people" aren't content to remain silent when the KKK spews their hate. It's an assertion, granted, but no moreso than yours.
 
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