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Originally Posted by shakran
It's amazing how quickly people are willing to give up their rights just because someone did something they don't like.
If you make them move back, you start a slippery slope. 100 feet today. 1000 feet tomorrow. One day protestors are relegated to demonstrating in a corn field in the middle of nowhere. We cannot take away liberties because some people are assholes. I am not willing to give up MY rights just because a couple of people were jerks.
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I agree with much of what you are saying. I think of how the Republican Convention in 2004 shut down swaths of New York City and put protesters behind fences blocks away from the convention. That unconstitutional police action was debated on national media for weeks.
I think that protesters can be legitimately moved when their protest denies rights to those at the protests for other reasons. At abortion clinics, for example, protesters are kept back so that they cannot deny patients their right of care from their doctor (which was clearly stated goal of the protesters). As I said above, I think that if and when violence breaks at Phelps' protests, the legal landscape changes to preventing the incitement of unlawful acts, which as I understand is the standard set by Bandenburg v. Ohio in 1969.
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