Arizona's state legislature has announced a legislative effort to combat the infamous Westboro Baptist Church's plans to picket the funerals of the shooting victims in Tucson over the weekend.
"We're going to try to protect the families from undue harassment," State Rep. Daniel Patterson (D), one of the leaders of a bipartisan group of legislators, told Talking Points Memo Monday.
While the Topeka-based congregation has been best known for their incendiary anti-gay, pro-dead soldier messages, they have now decided to take their insensitive protest to the services of victims -- including a 9-year-old girl and a 30-year-old Giffords aide who was set to be married -- killed by Jared Lee Loughner on Saturday.
The chair of the Pima County GOP, for one, has since said that he thinks such a law is a dangerous infringement on free speech laws.
"I don't know what's in the law, but I do think it's indicative of always looking to the law to solve problems," Brian Miller told TPM in a later interview. "We will not sign on or advocate any policy that limits free speech."
Miller tells TPM that there are plans to enact a non-legislative, 1st Amendment-preserving blockade to the agitating religious group:
I am not sure what they think they can do without limiting free-speech. Although something needs to be done about that group, picketing funerals with hate speech is just horrible.
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking
There is no question that these people are out of line and need some serious mental health help, but limiting free speech is not the answer. That becomes a downward snowball that ends up taking away all our rights to free speech. The distance from the gravesite for the protest is about as far as any law should go.
Isaiah 48:18, “Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”
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blebs wrote:Sometimes Morally right trumps other things.
Not when it comes to the First Amendment. "Morally right" is too much of a subjective term. It would leave the door wide open for future abuse. It would be solving a problem by making a bigger problem.
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking
Instead of building some angels to block the view, get the American Legion Rider's with a few Hell's Angel's mixed in block the protesters. They'd think twice before protesting again.
I would probably agree that the protesters are mentally challenged and somehow that could be taken in consideration as a reson to detain them at least.
