Free Speech

[talon]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/05/hate.preacher/index.html?hpt=Sbin

"The court is being asked to address how far entities such as cemeteries and churches can go in restricting demonstrators' right to free speech."

Unless churches are owned by the government, they have the right to restrict speech on their property and to seek government protection against hate speech directed at attendees in their private facilities. Most cemeteries are privately owned and thus fall under the same protections from hate speech. The exception, obviously, are military cemeteries which are publicly owned.

Even then, I would think that, out of respect for the deceased and their survivors, that the funeral home/cemetery should provide a screen to block off sight of the protestors and possibly even some sort of sound absorbers or sound "cover" to block out their shouts. They can protest all they want, but the families and friends of the deceased have the equal right to not see or hear the protests.

It's sad that anyone would choose to picket and protest at a funeral, and sadder still that families must now make provisions to safeguard themselves against that sort of hate speech.

In a free society, however, such disgraceful displays of misdirected anger must be allowed to happen.

In a free society, we are equally free to ignore such childish antics, to erect protective barriers against them, and to point out how childish, misdirected, and wrong such speech is.

But I question the motives of the Hate Preacher. I do not get the feeling from any of this that it is anything more than a way to support his family. I know he claims his "church" takes no money, but that doesn't mean he personally doesn't take any. When he and his family have been in town here protesting at the local university, he took donations to support his hate speech against educating people.

That's right, before the Hate Preacher started hating gays and soldiers and Jews, he was hating college students and education (despite himself having a law degree). He was a common sight each spring at the university and the students plotted ways to mock him (the Church of the Pink Unicorn is the most enduring). He hates a lot of things and he's raised his family to hate everything, too.

I believe the Hate Preacher's group does take money because it costs in excess of $200,000 a year to stage all those protests and it takes time to stage them; time that can't be used for gainful employment. Of course, they may also get a lot of their money from lawsuits, but not near enough and not consistently.

Ultimately, it's not the vile and venom and hate speech spewed by these people that bothers me - it's all those people who help fund this activity. For this family, hating is profitable. It is the saddest reflection on our society that there are enough haters among us to help fund their endeavors.

So I kind of strayed away from free speech to prod lightly at the darker side of freedom.

People like the Hate Preacher and the Tea Partiers are blessed with the freedom to spew their hatred in this country. I suppose it serves a purpose because all the hatred and fear is concentrated in identifiable locations and it allows people to vicariously purge their own inner demons and to publicly discuss their own stances.

They are free to protest what they will, but not necessarily where they will, nor can they say just anything. There are limits. I believe the Hate Preacher and his family have exceeded those limits and the law needs to recognize this and protect the Hate Preacher's targets. They need to be called on their libelous and slanderous speech - which is NOT protected under free speech.