Strange bedfellows indeed

OK, so give me the boundaries of what is inciteful speech. Something that angers someone else? Wow. That could be everything from the obvious to cat-neutering. I mean, really. That's a bureaucratic nightmare waiting to descend upon the legal system.

 

As detestable as it is, it's clearly a free speech issue.

 

I understand what you're saying, Bubbler. I really do.

I'm just not so sure you can equate what Phelps and his group are doing to someone yelling "fire" in a theatre. The reason I say that is because the Phelps people are basically handling this the way protestors carry out legal protests. They apply for their permit and stand in their assigned area. That's why no one has been killed or even seriously injured at one of these. They apply well in advance, alert the authorities to their presence and follow the rules. They don't just show up and run through the gravestones waving their idiotic banners and screaming about gays and shit.

If you start drawing the line at inciteful speech, you're begging for trouble. Too many definitions, too many interpretations. The way I've always understood the "fire" rule, it was meant to ensure the crazies didn't have the right to put innocent folks in danger. Phelps and his group, nutty as they are, aren't doing that.

 

Dammit, Dammit! You made me whip out my Ball State journalism law book for the first time in well over a decade. Mark Popovich! You magnifcent bastard!

There's four tests SCOTUS has used, one abandoned, that determine whether speech is protected: Bad-Tendency Test (abandoned because it basically protected nothing), Clear-And-Present Danger Test (basically whether speech presents an imminent danger, likely to abused like a red-headed stepchild by Bush appointees), Balancing Test, and Absolutism.

To me, this falls under the Balancing Test. According to my book, when the Balancing Test is applied by SCOTUS, "they conciously weigh speech interests against conflicting social and personal interests."

For those of you who argue its protected, you fall under Absolutism, where anything is protected.

Then there's the concept of time, place and manner.

Here's a case which I think is pertinent to my argument.

In Frisby vs. Schultz, SCOTUS upheld a city picketing ordinance that was aimed at the privacy of homes, not at restricting demonstrators' content. The upheld law was for a Wisconsin doctor who had abortion protesters at her home. Would a cemetary be similarly protected by the spate of local anti-Phelps ordinances that have popped up?

Holy crap! I bought this book used because it had a lot of pertinent passages hi-lited, and apparently that was an acceptable trade-off for the fact that this book smells like someone ejaculated on it. Blech!

 

To equate the Frisby case to this you would have to apply some sort of privacy protection to funerals. I don't think you can do that. Obviously, you can for a funeral service held indoors at a church or whatever, but at a cemetery, I just don't think that would offer the same sort of privacy protection.

Also, I think it's worth noting that Phelps and his group aren't really at these funerals. They're set up somewhere well away from the service, but in a visible location. Basically, the only time funeral-goers see them is when they enter and leave the cemetery.

 

Minor threadjack, and this is not at all to pick on Bubbler, but I don't think a lot of people understand that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy, not a valid form of arguing a point. So maybe somebody ultimately will be proved right by arguing that barring Fred Phelps from carrying out his gruesome protests will lead to restrictions on other forms of speech, but the argument doesn't hold water at the moment that it is made.

"The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This "argument" has the following form:


Event X has occurred (or will or might occur).
Therefore event Y will inevitably happen.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim. This is especially clear in cases in which there is a significant number of steps or gradations between one event and another. "

 

FDP, you say it's a fallacy but I disagree. As history has proven time and time again, both sides ... and even fringe groups ... will always try to push and test the limits, and when you open the door, people tend to rush through it. Again, this applies to both conservatives and liberals.

If you set the precendent by restricting certain realms of free speech, you make it that much easier for someone else to come along and go even further.

Despite your definition, event A doesn't mean that event B will automatically happen. But since there's a chance event A could ALLOW event B to happen, and there's people out there who WANT to make event B happen, why would you let it get that far in the first place?

 

I don't think Phelps' free speech should be restricted. I'm just saying that the slippery slope argument is not logically valid. It's like arguing that the Yankees are going to win tonight. You may be proved right, but your argument was never good because it was basically a guess.

 

Since when has logic EVER played into politics and the law, especially in this country? :

Besides, let's look at your example. If you have reason to believe the Yankees will win and your own team's future is affected by that, then you take actions based on the likelihood that the Yankees will win. Basic military strategy (although some generals argue you should never base your strategy on what you THINK the enemy will do. There's arguments for both sides and both sides are right).

 

It is guessing, and you're right that there is a method to it. All I am saying is that in the science of logic, and it is a science, this argument is invalid.

 

Perhaps it is a science, but again, I ask, since when has there ever been that much logic in our government and society?

 

Very rarely, and I never argued that point. I was just trying to bring some logic to a message board.