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Originally Posted by shakran
The point of a protest is so that people, usually a specific group of people, hears you. The anti-abortion crowd does not protest in front of the catholic church because they don't need to get their message across to the catholic church. They protest in front of places where they know people have opinions that they want to change.
If we limit where someone can protest, we are placing restrictions on their freedom of expression. If we start down that path, who knows how bad it will get before someone wises up and turns it around?
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shakran, I think you are advocating an absolute literal interpretation of the first amendment, and in your arguments you are ignoring accomodations the courts have already determined are appropriate to limit speech. Free speech is already abridged in ways most of society has accepted.
Abortion protesters don't expect to change opinions at clinics. They hope to generate media coverage which broadcasts their agenda as widely as possible. They are moved far enough from the clinic so as not to impede patients from seeing their doctors. That is a ligitimate restriction of political and religious expression. No one has moved them "20 miles from Faribault" in the 30 years since Roe v. Wade.
Obscenity, defamation, sedition, and hate speech are not protected speech. They are illegal expressions of speech. They are punishable offenses. I think that it's wise that the constitution has the flexibility to accomodate social conditions that weren't considered when the Constitution and the original Bill of Rights were drafted. The Bill of Rights was the first exercise of this flexibility.
This is the major flaw in your arguments in this thread IMO. I agree to a great extent with most of what you are saying, but you present the first amendment as as absolute that can never be approached legally. It has been approached from several angles, and at appropriate times the Supreme Court ruled that some forms of speech are improper and unlawful. I hope that you can admit that there is some room for accomodation as society changes.