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It is frustrating Lebell, to read your post, because you appear to be telling me that this thread would be in a better position if I had not posted. There was no intent on my part to make a point about what "forms of speech should not be protected".

Please note that before my post, the only information in this thread was from sources sympathetic to the people who were arrested or were attributed to those who were arrested. There were no quotes from the Philadelphia police, or from those who participated in the theme of Outfest on October 10, 2004.

I am thinking that you see this as an either/or issue, and I do not. To my way of thinking, the circumstances of these arrests and the court proceedings involve many details, and similar to most situations, contain more shades of gray, than black or white. I posted because I was struck by the comments of previous posters, who seemed to convey more acceptance of the initially posted story than they did curiousity to find out more about what transpired and why.

I knew nothing about this subject before this thread was started. I did more research than I might have if the source of the story was the nytimes or the washingtonpost. My research leads me to suspect that the leader of the free speech 11,is
Michael Marcavage. I think that he provoked the incident to further the lawsuit he had filed just two days before against the City of Philadelphia, and that he intended to provoke an incident that would have a result similar to yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater.

I did not plan to post what I think aout Michael Marcavage, so far, because it is a preliminary opinion, and I did not want to distract from the details of the story. Comments directed at me in response indicate that I challenged some conclusions that some posters had already made.

Please re-read my post Lebell, and if you still believe my post to be "pointless", send me a PM and I'll edit it out and go away.