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Originally Posted by Telluride
The whole point of protesting is to create a public disturbance.
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Making a public statement of protest and being a public disturbance are far from the same thing.
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And if you turn on your TV, turn on your radio, open a magazine or go outside, you are doing so with the knowledge that you may see or hear things you find objectionable. We don't have a right to be shielded from things that may offend us.
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I think the FCC would disagree with you on that. In the interest of public decency, the TV, radio, and print publications you reference are quite rigidly censored based largely on the idea of what is "offensive". Now, there is no federal law saying that you can't say "fuck" on a public street corner, but that doesn't mean you can't be cited for public disturbance based on the fact that you're using offensive language in a public setting just for the sake of using profanity or because you're just a crude idiot. You're comparing "saying whatever you want, in public" and a protest. They are not the same thing.
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And, in a free country, Phelps and his followers would have the right to do just that.
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First- if you don't think you're in a free country, feel free to leave. Second, no one says they don't have the right to protest.
You're not even demonstrating the ability to differentiate between civil proceedings and federal law. You're taking a win in a
civil court between two individuals, having nothing to do with the government, and extrapolating the government-sponsored downfall of the right to protest... which is utterly stupid.
The judge didn't say they can't protest. No one said anything about not being allowed to protest. A family was harassed by a group of people and won a settlement in a civil court. That's all. Under the guise of protest or not, these people were proven, in court, to demonstrate the characteristics of a harassment.
Now, if you want to slide that down your slippery slope and think that suddenly all protests will be held as harassment, I'd say that's extremely far-fetched. Do you even know the requirements for something to be considered harassment? Do you know what needs to be demonstrated by the complainant for something to even make it to trial as a civil harassment charge? If you can't, why would we even consider your slippery slope?