Originally Posted by shakran

Let's take your wishes and extrapolate them. First we move them back 100 feet. Someone at the funeral doesn't like that so we move them back 500 feet. Well that's still not cool because you can still hear them at the funeral. So we'll say no protesting within 4 miles of a cemetery when a funeral is going on. Then the protestors will protest when there's no funeral, but they'll upset some family member that's visiting the grave, so we'll say no protesting within 4 miles of a cemetery, period. Now the places to protest are severely limited. Once we make a "protest distance" law, we are on the proverbial slippery slope. At what distance does the distance law become unconstitutional? 5 feet, hey that's fine. 100 feet, yeah, that's good too. 500 feet. . well now we're getting kinda far, but hey we did 100 feet and that's not unconstitutional so 500 feet must be ok too. Eventually we could require that all protests be held in a soybean field 20 miles away from Faribault Minnesota. Sure, they can still protest. they have the right to protest. But who's gonna hear them? How can their protest have any meaning? 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?


And Cynthetiq, yes, I know that's happening. And it's unconstitutional and it's wrong, and I'm outraged that people aren't outraged over it.