Crikey.
Bryan Fischer, Dolt and Christian Whacko, argues that Christian Whackos that he claims to disagree with can and should be silenced by the government.
Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas are all wrong in their ruling on the reprehensible Westboro Baptist Church protests at military funerals.
For the record, I confess that I FULLY AGREE that the WBC’s protests are reprehensible.
Alito alone is right.
That should be about all you need to know.
As he says, the First Amendment is “not a license for vicious verbal assault.”
Actually, yes, it is. I can call you a dolt, Bryan. You, Bryan, can call gays and Muslims demonic, evil, awful, treasonous, eaters of babies and kickers of kittens.
And, remarkably, neither of us can be silenced by the government.
Isn’t the First Amendment grand?
The gay-haters at Westboro have plenty of free speech avenues open to them – books, articles, video, audio, TV, radio, public forums, internet postings, emails etc.
Yes, if only they used your various media outlets, gay-hater Bryan.
But they do not have a right to “intentionally inflict severe emotional injury on private persons.”
If their intent is solely do so, I’d be inclined to agree.
But, then, the basis for the SCOTUS ruling was that their protest was making a political/ideological statement (“THE US IS CURSED BECAUSE WE DON’T KILL TEH GAYZ!!”), something I’m sure you can appreciate, Bryan. Sure, some folks might be offended, even emotionally injured by that. But if we jailed folks who offended or emotionally injured others, Bryan … where would you be?
The Supremes in this 8-1 decision have taken ugliness off its leash, turned it loose, and legitimized the most vile forms of public verbal attack. They have cried havoc and let slip the dogs of vitriol.
If the First Amendment does not protect the most objectionable and (subjectively judged) vile public discourse, what does it, in fact, protect, Bryan?
The free speech plank in the First Amendment was intended to protect robust public discourse, not vulgarity, profanity, obscenity or pornography.
Well, there’s the trick, Bryan — what’s “vulgar, profane” etc., and what’s public discourse. Frankly, I consider much of what you write to be vulgar … even profane … and, yet, I would never suggest that what you write should be censored or subject to civil penalties. Mockery, rejection, “vulgar and profane” rebuttal, certainly. But that’s public discourse for you.
Every state at the time of the Founding, for instance, had laws against public utterances of blasphemy, and no one considered for a moment that these laws were contrary to the First Amendment.
Yes. Every state, I believe, allowed slavery, too, Bryan, without considering it contrary to American principles and the Constitution. Would you agree with that, too?
Most states at the time of the Founding had established churches, Bryan. Many vigorously argued that the First Amendment only applied to the Federal Government establishing a church. Yet, within a few decades, most states disestablished their official denomination. What’s your take on that, Bryan?
Such utterances weren’t for one second considered to be protected forms of speech.
And today they are. So were people wiser in 1789 or in 2011? On what basis, other than personal preference, would you say so?
And there were enforceable laws against slander and defamation of character. Those weren’t considered protected forms of speech either. This latest and egregiously misguided ruling is wholly out of phase with the Founders’ intent.
Slander and defamation of character aren’t considered constitutionally protected today, either, even by SCOTUS. What’s your point?
The only upside here is that if the Supreme Court says it’s okay to say “God hates fags” …
Note that there is a difference between saying something is legal, or Constitutionally protected, and saying it’s “okay.”
… – something that’s not even true, since the truth is the God loves homosexuals enough that he sent his only Son to die for them – …
Which is, oddly, the most positive thing you’ve ever had to say about homosexuals.
… then it certainly must be okay for students in a classroom, for public officials, and for radio talk show hosts to express reasoned and rational criticism of homosexual conduct without any kind of penalty whatsoever.
It certainly is. Nobody’s suggested censorship against or legal penalties against a person expressing their opinions about homosexuality being wrong or sinful or harmful (“reasoned and rational” or not). And, by the same token, expressing “reasoned and rational criticism” of such doltitude is, similarly protected from legal interference.
Similarly, I might say that Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, or Atheism is reprehensible and socially unacceptable. And, similarly, people can call me an asshat and not invite me to parties.
We just need to tell heterophobes and Christophobes to get a grip, lighten up, back off, and read the Supreme Court’s Westboro ruling and go away.
“Heterophobes”? Pray tell, Bryan, who’s actually advocating a heterophobic position. Really, I want to know.
Christophobic, perhaps, to the extent that Christians position themselves as opponents of a particular group or belief.
But, then, SCOTUS would certainly suggest that the law or public officials cannot discriminate against personal political expression, as an individual. By the same token, they have upheld that, when speaking or acting as an agent of the state, discriminatory public expression (whether against blacks, gays, Christians, left-handers, the elderly, etc.) is not protected.
I understand it’s difficult to distinguish between “public” and “private” or “personal” and “government” actions, Bryan, but think about it a bit.
And it certainly must be okay for students in counseling programs to express their moral disapproval of homosexual behavior without getting bounced out of counseling programs and having their professional careers torpedoed before they even start.
Again, Bryan, it depends. A private counseling program can choose what it decides to adopt as a moral basis for whatever it wants. If it is public, though, or publicly funded, discrimination — based on gender, religion, race, national origin, or even, yes, sexual orientation (all of which have been defended by people on religious grounds) — is not acceptable.
If you are seeking to serve the public, you need to put aside moral approval or disapproval of the public’s actions.
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Despite what you’ve heard, DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) is perfectly constitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in 1939 (Pacific Employers Insurance v. Industrial Accident) that “the full faith and credit clause does not require one state to substitute for its own statute…the conflicting statute of another state.” Q.E.D. States cannot be compelled to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state if their own constitution and law prohibit recognition of such unions. http://ow.ly/47b2p
Note that DOMA has two components:
First, it says that states don’t have to follow what other states assert represents marriage (from a gender mix standpoint), even with the Constitutional “full faith and credit” clause. That’s kind of interesting, since it also suggests that if state X disagrees with state Y on the age of consent or of consanguinity, it can similarly decide that state X can declare a married couple as not-married for purposes of their state law.
Of course, that never happens in most cases. It did happen in the case of inter-racial marriages. And DOMA gave coverage for it to happen regarding same-gender marriage.
Frankly, whether it’s a full-faith-and-credit suit, or an equal-protection suit, I think such state laws are indefensible.
The second component is more interesting, as it says that the Federal Government will not recognize state-recognized marriage, in this particular instance, as marriage. As it currently stands, the Federal Government always recognizes marriage as whatever a given state recognizes. Age, consanguinity, racial makeup, whatever, the Feds respect a given state’s marriages.
Except in the case of same-gender marriage, in which case the Feds apparently are willing to disregard what a given state allows marriage to be.
Not very state-friendly, wouldn’t you agree, Bryan?
More confirmation that the Bible is right when it says that homosexual sex is “contrary to nature,” …
Which I’ve never quite understood as an argument. Are humans not part of nature?
… and that those who engage in it “receive in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Rom. 1:26, 27). There has been a rash of new HIV infections in Idaho, primarily among men having anonymous sex with men in city parks, highway rest stops, university libraries, and bookstores. In a park, you signal availability by how you park your car or what path you walk. There are websites and GPS phone apps devoted to arranging anonymous encounters. A health official says, “I don’t know what the future holds…if we don’t do something to help educate our people.” How about educating men to stop having sex with men? How about educating them that every act of homosexual sex could give them a death sentence? How about educating the public that we should not grant special rights and privileges based exclusively on sexually deviant behavior? That would be a logical, rational place to start. http://ow.ly/47cHH
Well, gee, Bryan. Maybe, alternately, if men who were seeking sex with men has the same social outlets as men seeking sex with women, you wouldn’t end up with a ton of anonymous, dangerous sex, either. There’s nothing about gay or lesbian sex that I’m aware of that is intrinsically promiscuous, save that it’s pushed to the shadows by our heterosexual culture. Anonymous, promiscuous heterosexual sex is pretty dangerous, too, even fatal. But we have paths that we socially encourage heterosexuals to pursue thatencourage responsible sexuality. If the same were true for gays, I suspect we’d have much less of a public health problem there, too.
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Got your Religion of Peace update right here: a blond-haired, blue-eyed 13-year-old girl in California had to run away to escape a forced marriage arranged by her Pakistani father – to a dude in Pakistan. Her father wanted to take her on a two-month vacation to Pakistan, and I’m guessing he wasn’t planning on having her come back. Islam is flatly, utterly, totally and irredeemably in conflict with the values of a Christian nation. It must not be allowed to take root and flourish here. http://ow.ly/47bhj
Well, that’s certainly what she claims.
I’m certainly not going to defend a forced arranged marriage. But neither am I going to claim that this is a case of “Islam” (unless you’re willing to posit that arranged marriages have never taken place in Christian families).
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We’ve had to deal with Muslim pirates for 227 years. Jefferson finally stopped paying blackmail money and sent in the Marines “to the shores of Tripoli,” as the Marine hymn reminds us. It’s time to get tough on Muslim pirates again. Right now Muslim pirates from Somalia are holding more than 30 vessels and more than 600 hostages. They made hundreds of millions of dollars last year in ransom payments. International law permits us to execute them on the open sea when we capture them, and even pursue them into port. (Two UN resolutions, 1851 and 1897, allow “hot pursuit” of pirates right into port and onto land.) The Romans, by the way, used to crucify pirates and the Carthaginians used to flay them alive. Let’s just shoot ‘em in the head and dump ‘em in the ocean. http://ow.ly/478y7
Allow me to point out that piracy is not now, nor historically has been, a Muslim pursuit. Indeed, ostensibly Christian pirates were as much a threat in the early days of the Republic as those of Tripoli.
I hold no truck with pirates, but calling them “Muslim pirates” is no more appropriate than calling them “African pirates” or “Northern Hemisphere Pirates” or “Indian Ocean Pirates.” Sorry, Bryan, your Islamophobia is showing.
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If you want to see where we’re headed: Canadian doctors are now doing end-of-life discussions with patients in coffee shops because there’s no place else to do them. They’ve got gurneys double-parked in hospital corridors. More of the wonders of socialized medicaine. Answer? Repeal ObamaCare in its entirely. Don’t even attempt to reform it – it’s not possible. As C.S. Lewis said, no arrangement of bad eggs will make a good omelet. Repeal and replace. http://ow.ly/4787n
Um, the article you link to, Bryan, is so frelling ideological that it’s impossible to make any coherent sense of it unless you are already bought into its proposition.
And I’ll counter that in the American system, end-of-life discussions aren’t nearly as likely to occur, because ideologues such as yourself have made them tantamount to death panels and killing grandma. Instead, the discussions are held with insurance companies denying further services, doctors scared of law suits, and families unable to pay for further care. Not a very good trade-off, Bryan.
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Focal Point update: My interview yesterday with Gov. Mike Huckabee got some media mentions and a lot of traffic from the wingers in the blogosphere. For instance, the Washington Post referred to the interview. Salon mentioned it while calling me a “prominent conservative,” the nicest thing wingers have said about me, maybe ever. On the other hand, Little Green Footballs called me “the religious right’s most crazed fanatic.” Guess you can’t please everybody.
Would that be the one where you supported Huckabee’s proposition that Obama was fundamentally un-American, had an un-American, Kenyanesque, anti-British childhood? Yeah, I agree, nothing there newsworthy to cover, except that Huckabee (no matter how charming he is on The Daily Show) is a dolt, too.