Supreme Court 8-1

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The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church. PGR will need to stand up more now. Ruling based on Free Speech.

[USNAviator]

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church. PGR will need to stand up more now. Ruling based on Free Speech.

Only one of 9 manned up

"Only Justice Samuel Alito dissented. He said the church's "outrageous conduct caused petitioner great injury, and the court now compounds that injury by depriving petitioner of a judgment that acknowledges the wrong he suffered," he said. "In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner."

[hbharrison]

And one shall stand alone!!

[crazymjb]

Are you guys serious? You swear an oath to the constitution. The first amendment is "the right to free speech" not "the right to free speech except when it offends Marines or is mean or ethically and morally questionable." The founding fathers would have COMPLETELY supported this decision, to say otherwise is ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the WBC guys and think they are jerks (putting it nicely), but I signed up to defend free speech to include their RIGHT to be jerks, even towards me and those who have fallen. If you disagree and think some speech should be censored you need to take a serious look at what you are doing in the Marine Corps.

Mike

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Are you guys serious? You swear an oath to the constitution. The first amendment is "the right to free speech" not "the right to free speech except when it offends Marines or is mean or ethically and morally questionable." The founding fathers would have COMPLETELY supported this decision, to say otherwise is ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the WBC guys and think they are jerks (putting it nicely), but I signed up to defend free speech to include their RIGHT to be jerks, even towards me and those who have fallen. If you disagree and think some speech should be censored you need to take a serious look at what you are doing in the Marine Corps.

Mike

Kid, you are jumping the gun. In defending a bunch of a*******s you are condemning other Marines for practicing their free speech.

Kid, you're a little too young to understand, you see many of us here still remember the taste of freedom, we go back that far. As part of my sig says "Washington did not use his right of free speech to defeat the British; He Shot Them."

[USNAviator]

Dave excellent examples. The SCOTUS also ruled that burning of the flag was an exercise of free speech. Try going to a Presidential campaign speech, stand up and start trying to argue with him. Your First Amendment rights will quickly be terminated

I had the misfortune last year to attend the funeral of a son of a friend of mine. He was a SEAL, KIA in Iraq. I saw up close and personal the venom these people spewed. Thank God for the Patriot Riders and other Veterans groups who stood between the family and these "church members".

[Kegler300]

There are limits to peaceful assembly and free speech...this is one that should've been upheld by the court.

[CrockettJW]

Free speech is free speech. But it is used for everything under the sun, no matter how much it needs to be stretched.
It is a law in some states that you cannot interfere with a funeral procession. Kansas legislators could try to make a law that forbids interference with funerals themselves, and see if that is unconstitutional, so that is one avenue.
I agree that free speech is what the First Amendment is all about, but why is it that yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is not free speech?
Because of other competing considerations. Why can't you pick up a police radio and just start transmitting whatever you want to transmit? Isn't that free speech?
How about the floor of the US Senate and the floor of the House, how about someone yelling during sessions? Free speech? or not?
If not, why not? Interfering with their sessions? How about interfering with someone's funeral?
So you see it is not free speech come hell or high water, it is free speech within the context of competing interests, other compelling interests.
There is no such thing as absolute free speech, there never has been, and there never will be.
Next time you want to try it out, go into a movie theater and just start making a speech, and see how far "Free Speech" will get you.
There is no such thing as unlimited free speech.
Our forefathers, I can virtually guarantee you, would not have sighed and said oh well, we'll let our funerals be disrupted. That is a given. They were big on free speech, but not idiotic about it.

I agree with you completely, but I wanted to add a few more limits on free speech besides the ones you listed in making your point. You also can't make false, libelous, and slanderous statements about a person or business.

I think Fred Phelps has some kind of mental problem. He was disbarred after making false statements about a woman he was in a legal case against.

His family is also questionable. They sound like they're brain-washed.

[CrockettJW]

Again, I agree. I think they hide behind the free speech to protect them while they're out there saying whatever they want to say.

Personally, I don't agree with any of what they do, whether it's against veterans or their "God hates fags" campaigns or any that I've heard from them.

This guy even wrote a letter to Saddam Hussein and visited Iraq to protest the war. He's a real nut.

[crazymjb]

I guess I'm just a kid who doesn't know anything about freedom so you can disregard this post. Yelling fire in a crowded theater directly causes people to die, infinging on their liberty. Committing lible spreads false information about one as fact, causing harm to them or their ability to do business, etc, infringing on their liberty. Disrupting emergency transmissions by keying a mic also causes people to die, infringing on their liberty. Standing across the street from a funeral is in bad taste, and isn't a kind thing to do, but is not in the same category as the examples you gave. If these people are making false claims about someone, or preventing the procession from happening, that becomes a different issue.

WRT to if you are in a private theater, you are on private property. If you do anything the theater owners don't like, they can kick you out for trespassing. If you don't leave, they get to call the cops. You don't have the same rights on private property that you do at home and on public land, you don't get to infringe on that property owners own rights on his own property.

Regardless of what you think I know, I assure you I do know what freedom is. I am opposed to adding more laws against when and about what people can speak out against publicly, to include groups like WBC. If you think my position is at the expense of other Marines and I an putting WBC first, you are wrong. I am putting our constitution first as I and you swore to put before our own lives and those of our brothers. Just as I won't follow illegal orders I won't put my emotional response towards a certain group ahead of the values I hold true.

Mike

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Kid - What you do not seem to understand is that many of the laws and rulings today are purely political. You have a so called president that got elected by misrepresenting himself to non-thinkers who thought they wanted change. This deer leader breaks the law and the constitution all the time and continues to misrepresent himself.

No Marine here has broken the law or violated the Constitution. We as Marines, will never surrender our rights as Americans to ***** and point out unjustness wherever we find it.

No one is calling you stupid, just naive maybe. You certainly have the right to speak your mind and everyone here would help you defend that right. We, perhaps a little more seasoned, have the right to totally disagree with you.

I'm one of those Patriot Guard Riders. If not for a snow storm up in Kansas, which cancelled their travel plans, the Westboro bunch were on their way to Tampa to interrupt a funeral of the 2 kids killed by their mother last month. The father was an officer at McDill. They have their rights, we have our rights to drown them out and make them invisible.

[CrockettJW]

I guess I'm not the kind of person who can put aside one belief to support another.

I really don't think what WBC does can be classified as freedom of speech. No one is telling them they can't say the things they say. No one is telling them they can't have their beliefs.

I disagree with WBC and despise what they do and what they stand for. Even if I agreed with them, I couldn't support them because what they do amounts to harassment, not free speech.

Traveling to the location of a dead serviceman (or any person) and disrupting the funeral should be a crime. I don't care if they're on public property or not. If you live across the street from me and you play your music too loud, I'm going to call the police. The police will show up and tell you (on your own property) to turn your music down because it's disrupting what I'm doing. The people of WBC do the same thing.

[crazymjb]

When I get back and get a bike I fully intend to join the local PGR chapter. I have friends who ride with them and have seen them at funerals, and fully support them drowning out WBC.

In terms of the illegalities of what our government does, I also fully agree. This admin just renewed Bushes patriot act. That is unfortunate. There are plenty of other examples. I am not about to give the government one more thing to make illegal. This just happens to be one of the things the SCOTUS got right.

I cannot and will not support any law that prevents someone from protesting at the site of a funeral. Sorry. Plenty of older less naive people then me share my viewpoint.

Mike

[CrockettJW]

When I get back and get a bike I fully intend to join the local PGR chapter. I have friends who ride with them and have seen them at funerals, and fully support them drowning out WBC.

In terms of the illegalities of what our government does, I also fully agree. This admin just renewed Bushes patriot act. That is unfortunate. There are plenty of other examples. I am not about to give the government one more thing to make illegal. This just happens to be one of the things the SCOTUS got right.

I cannot and will not support any law that prevents someone from protesting at the site of a funeral. Sorry. Plenty of older less naive people then me share my viewpoint.

Mike

I don't mean to start an argument, but I can't see the logic in saying that you agree that they have freedom of speech by protesting at a funeral and at the same time say that you would go and disrupt their protest of the funeral. In that way, if they have a right to free speech, by your actions, aren't you denying them their free speech?

Keep in mind that I don't agree that what WBC does is free speech and that your action does not deny them of their right to free speech.

[CrockettJW]

I guess that's not quite as bad as when General Order #1 got in my way of downloading "art."