Christ and what Christ would do are entirely irrelevant.
It's not irrelevant. The protestors do so while parading themselves as Christians, when they apparently have no idea what the primary focus of their supposed faith should teach them, nor does it in any way help to promote the cause of said supposed faith.
As shitty as it is, we can't really let our emotions get in the way of the first amendment. It really isn't a good idea.
To me it's not about first amendment rights. It's about respect, and defamation of private citizens. Isn't there some law against me following you around with a sign and shouting over everything you say?
It's not irrelevant. The protestors do so while parading themselves as Christians, when they apparently have no idea what the primary focus of their supposed faith should teach them, nor does it in any way help to promote the cause of said supposed faith.
What you personally do or do not consider to be "Christian" from your very Baptist Middle-American perspective has nothing to do with what is/is not legal or what should/should not be legal in a secular society.
What you personally do or do not consider to be "Christian" from your very Baptist Middle-American perspective has nothing to do with what is/is not legal or what should/should not be legal in a secular society.
You're inferring that I'm projecting Christian teachings upon governmental law-making.
I'm not. I'm annoyed that they parade themselves as Christians while doing something that so obviously contradicts it. Being that I myself am a Christian, I have a right to be offended that they publicly associate themselves with such as me.
Also, from a political standpoint, I disagree with anyone protesting at funerals, as I don't see publicly protesting private citizens as being covered under freedom of speech.
Oh, and for the record: I'm a Democrat, I voted for Obama, and I will vote for him again in the next election, so don't jump all over me as though I'm of the Christian Right who use their faith as a political tool.
To me it's not about first amendment rights. It's about respect, and defamation of private citizens. Isn't there some law against me following you around with a sign and shouting over everything you say?
Okay, so why not ban protesting funerals in general? Or protests, say, against planned parenthood where the sole idea of the protest is to shame and harass women who enter? Again, I'm not saying MAN I LIKE THEM WESTBOROS, I think they're really hateful and pretty miserable individuals, but banning the right to protest is kind of: ehhehhhnnngnnnnnn....
Being that I myself am a Christian, I have a right to be offended that they publicly associate themselves with such as me.
I don't anyone is saying that they're an upstanding group of people
Another thing to note: The Phelps family is primarily made up of lawyers. They make money from lawsuits. The fact that they get so much attention is only making them do more of these protests because it means the better chance that they can sue someone for assault and whatnot. The best option really is to just try to ignore the clowns and choke off their income.
Okay, so why not ban protesting funerals in general? Or protests, say, against planned parenthood where the sole idea of the protest is to shame and harass women who enter? Again, I'm not saying MAN I LIKE THEM WESTBOROS, I think they're really hateful and pretty miserable individuals, but banning the right to protest is kind of: ehhehhhnnngnnnnnn....
The right to protest public figures (whose rights are different than private citizens), businesses, and goverments should be protected.
The right to harass private citizens should not. You mentioned harassing women who enter Planned Parenthood... for the record, I think that's many shades of wrong.
The best option really is to just try to ignore the clowns and choke off their income.
At some point, the court can recognize frivolous lawsuits as being just that. Frivolous. I remember watching a news report once about an old lady who kept suing her neighbors for stuff, and eventually the court refused to take any further lawsuits from her.
Also, I disagree about the idea of ignoring them. I really think that it will just cause them to be louder and more insistent. This bill being signed into law is a good thing, and should have been done a long time ago. Perhaps even a very long time ago, what with the flak Vietnam vets were getting back in the day.
Let's say a guy does something really, really unpopular and bad like molesting a bunch of children and a bunch of people protest his trials saying that he's a horrible person and whatnot. Nobody would really bat an eye at this because the thing the guy did was unpopular and legitimately bad. Everyone would think this is *justice*, not harassment.
As shitty as it is, I honestly don't think the government should be regulating this sort of thing UNLESS someone gets physically hurt or stalked.
Next thing you know, you'll tell me I should have the right to point a loaded gun at you so long as I make sure to never pull the trigger.
We are private citizens of this country. We deserve a certain level of privacy and respect. We deserve to be reasonably protected from hateful people who make it their goal to make our lives miserable. We deserve to be able to live peaceful lives, free from government or corporate oppression. Granted, such freedom comes at a price and is subject to debate by differing opinions.
Banning the protesting of our veterans isn't merely for the sake of the dead. It's for the sake of the living who mourn the dead and who are subject to being followed around by these hateful people.
Would you like for people to hold a picket line in front of your house just because they can?
What about your right not to have me tattoo DUMBASS into your forehead without your permission or to spray paint "you suck" on the side of your house? Or to go to where you work everyday and tell your boss repeatedly how stupid you are?
(These are hypotheticals. I'm not saying I think this about you.)
We do have rights to more than just freedom of speech. And my rights to do what I want will obviously encroach on your right to do what you want, so it follows that we should be afforded some reasonable level of protection from being total jerks to each other.
At some point, the court can recognize frivolous lawsuits as being just that. Frivolous. I remember watching a news report once about an old lady who kept suing her neighbors for stuff, and eventually the court refused to take any further lawsuits from her.
Considering they were using their right like everybody else, they aren't being frivolous for suing someone who, say, breaks their car window out of rage.
And to your thing about holding a gun against someone's head and picketing someone's house, that is inciting violence and violating one's privacy, ie: being a stalker. That doesn't stop people from doing it regardless, but I digress. These people are just being asshats holding up signs and generally being ignorant and stupid. Despite this, they don't physically harass anyone or lay their fingers on anybody (they know this will get them in trouble with the law) so they aren't really doing anything but spouting off idiotic statements. They may be hateful asshats that hurt peoples feelings, but if we keep signing things into law every time someone feels bad, it's not going to be a pretty sight.
The sheer fact that you'd say some freedom is okay but others isn't, well, I just really can't agree to that. Free speech is free speech. It will occasionally hurt people feelings and make people feel really awful but to take one's right to it away is to take everyone's rights away.
And to your thing about holding a gun against someone's head and picketing someone's house, that is inciting violence and violating one's privacy, ie: being a stalker.
tomato, tomahto... or is this not a slippery slope anymore? Where does the slippery slope end and common sense begin?
they don't physically harass anyone or lay their fingers on anybody (they know this will get them in trouble with the law) so they aren't really doing anything but spouting off idiotic statements.
there are more levels of abuse than physical abuse. There is emotional abuse, psychological abuse...
Children might say "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me," but you know what... it's just not true.
People can ruin your life by doing more than just breaking your stuff or physically beating you up.
tomato, tomahto... or is this not a slippery slope anymore? Where does the slippery slope end and common sense begin?
Common sense would dictate that someone holding a gun up against someone's head is looking to harm a person or threaten a person. These people don't do that. They'll say people are going to hell, but hey, that's not really different from a much larger demographic of the American public. They're just louder and less picky about it.
People can ruin your life by doing more than just breaking your stuff or physically beating you up.
As someone who has dealt with, for one example, dealing with kids who would stalk me on my mile-long walk home every day from middle school and would threaten to hold me down and rape me then throw rocks at me until I became a vegetable, I can tell you I know that words can hurt really bad. People who use language in attempt to harm are bad people and I can't defend them one bit. However if you tried to legislate speech to only allow statements that don't hurt anybody's feelings, then nobody can say anything anymore.
You're inferring that I'm projecting Christian teachings upon governmental law-making.
I'm not. I'm annoyed that they parade themselves as Christians while doing something that so obviously contradicts it. Being that I myself am a Christian, I have a right to be offended that they publicly associate themselves with such as me.
I'm not implying that. I'm implying that the moment it became about something being signed into law, what you personally see as "Christian" really ceases to be relevant to the core of the conversation. The president is signing it into law for the Baptists, the Amish, Jews, Sikhs, Mennonites, Muslims, Atheists, anti-war, pro-war, gay, straight, etc etc. What one person thinks is "Christian" doesn't really factor in because the law doesn't have a Christianity-O-Meter as some legal tool. The moment it becomes about a law, a whole new conversation has begun. From a personal standpoint, I think the vast majority of folks have already established the "I don't like them and think they're really skeevy awful folks" part. This new information is about law, so Christ/Christians/Christianity is little more than flavor text and is very much irrelevant to the main point.
Also, from a political standpoint, I disagree with anyone protesting at funerals, as I don't see publicly protesting private citizens as being covered under freedom of speech.
As I political point, I disagree with power of the government to sign away the speech rights of a small group that is considered to be wrong by the government and the vast majority of people. I disagree that you cannot exercise your freedom of speech to protest the actions of a single person, that free speech only applies to speech about decentralized organizations. I also disagree that they're "protesting a person" at all. What they're protesting is a war and an organized event meant to glorify that war. Their ability to yell hateful things on publicly owned land is important, valuable, and needs to be protected. Because ultimately, many worthwhile thoughts have been branded obnoxious, hateful, wrong, vile, and disgusting throughout the course of human history, and the government's ability to shut those off on a case by case basis is a really scary precedent.
Oh, and for the record: I'm a Democrat, I voted for Obama, and I will vote for him again in the next election, so don't jump all over me as though I'm of the Christian Right who use their faith as a political tool.
I'm implying that the moment it became about something being signed into law, what you personally see as "Christian" really ceases to be relevant to the core of the conversation. [...] The moment it becomes about a law, a whole new conversation has begun.
Conversations can flit back and forth between topics. They're not bound to one at a time nor forbidden for topics to intertwine in places.
The primary (if not only, as far as I am aware) group of people who are protesting military funerals is Westboro. They parade themselves as Christians while doing this, which makes Christians, and Baptists, in general appear as though that's what we're about when it's not. Since the actions of said group are the primary reason why this law was passed, it is relevant to discuss their motives and how I disagree with them.
I can't help but feel that you're angry at me for talking about Christianity at all, rather than because it's a separate topic in the discussion.
In any case... what I'm basically hearing from most of you here is "the government sucks at protecting us from each other, so they should say the heck out of it and if people ruin each others' lives then that's too bad and they should get over it."
Sure. While we're at it, the government sucks at helping the needy so why bother anyway? We should just kick the poor and disabled out into the street and make them fend for themselves. If they suffer and die, then too bad but at least the government isn't getting involved. Also, the rights of corporations should be respected, so they should continue to to be able to donate as much money as they want toward political campaigns (in the guise of superpacs), and should be able to put any amount of whatever they want into our food and water without telling us... ooh, why even have government run water treatment plants at all? The government sucks at protecting us so why bother.
I'm going to go start a textile factory and see if I can lock my employees in while the building burns to the ground. I mean, who really needs these dumb fire regulations?
I'm not attacking a straw man. You accused me of suggesting that my faith and what it teaches should directly dictate or color the actions of the government:
What you personally do or do not consider to be "Christian" from your very Baptist Middle-American perspective has nothing to do with what is/is not legal or what should/should not be legal in a secular society.
or at the very least attacked me for discussing the motives for the primary group responsible for the passing of this law, on the basis that the two aren't related when, in fact, they are.
Conversations can flit back and forth between topics. They're not bound to one at a time nor forbidden for topics to intertwine in places.
The primary (if not only, as far as I am aware) group of people who are protesting military funerals is Westboro. They parade themselves as Christians while doing this, which makes Christians, and Baptists, in general appear as though that's what we're about when it's not. Since the actions of said group are the primary reason why this law was passed, it is relevant to discuss their motives and how I disagree with them.
Since "Christianity" is an almost entirely meaningless vague catch-all term for significantly more than 70% of all Americans, I really doubt that it has that much of an image issue outside of really small, liberal, college-age demographics that are going to hate the culturally dominant organized religion anyway.
I can't help but feel that you're angry at me for talking about Christianity at all, rather than because it's a separate topic in the discussion.
No, I just find it to be a poor thought process to look at the statement of a legal issue, state an opinion on the legal issue, and then speak in highly factional non-legal terminology. I'm saying that whether or not you feel they represent a term so vague it almost as well may be "American" doesn't really have a bearing in whether or not allowing them to do what they do is a good idea.
In any case... what I'm basically hearing from most of you here is "the government sucks at protecting us from each other, so they should say the heck out of it and if people ruin each others' lives then that's too bad and they should get over it."
I'm saying that giving the government the power to cut off protests it doesn't like on a very zoned-in, case-by-case basis is a frightening legal precedent. I'm saying that allowing them to do this now is giving the government a new superpower, and even if you believe that the people in charge now are entirely benevolent, the government is a system that can be filled with any new set of people every few years.
Sure. While we're at it, the government sucks at helping the needy so why bother anyway? We should just kick the poor and disabled out into the street and make them fend for themselves. If they suffer and die, then too bad but at least the government isn't getting involved.
It's an invalid argument. It's not about what the government is bad at doing(which is nigh everything aside from wasting time and money), it's about what adds an avenue of abuse to a bloated system partially run by the corrupt and power-hungry.
Your example of helping the needy is actually a really good one for me, because to a certain extent what you said is entirely true. Post government-to-government aid, Africa's per-capita income is down, and twice as many people live on only a dollar a day. Direct aid, when used as a long-term solution, can very much do far more harm than good. This doesn't mean that governments should "do nothing", though "doing nothing" in many cases *would* leave the needy in a better place than they might be post-aid, but it does mean that long-term solutions need to account for more systematic problems, like corruption and abuse.
Also, the rights of corporations should be respected, so they should continue to to be able to donate as much money as they want toward political campaigns (in the guise of superpacs), and should be able to put any amount of whatever they want into our food and water without telling us... ooh, why even have government run water treatment plants at all? The government sucks at protecting us so why bother.
Entirely unrelated to the core point. For one thing, SuperPACs have little to do with free speech, since they are obnoxiously confidential, and they fall into the *real* issue of government abuse of power. The government has very little it can abuse by monitoring water supplies, either.
I'm going to go start a textile factory and see if I can lock my employees in while the building burns to the ground. I mean, who really needs these dumb fire regulations?
Still very much missing the point.
I'm not attacking a straw man. You accused me of suggesting that my faith and what it teaches should directly dictate or color the actions of the government:
or at the very least attacked me for discussing the motives for the primary group responsible for the passing of this law, on the basis that the two aren't related when, in fact, they are.
Except they're really not, or at least they're incredibly unimportant. Our government has signed into law a reactionary ban on a very specific form of public protest because most people find this protest to be vile and disrespectful. It's not the kind of power I think the government should have, and thinking the government should have this kind of power has very little to do with any one person's limited(though relatively common in certain demographic regions) view of what Christianity is. You liked the government action, which doesn't really have anything to do with Christianity at all. The political use of "Christianity" is an extremely inconsequential periphery element.
I'm saying that whether or not you feel they represent a term so vague it almost as well may be "American" doesn't really have a bearing in whether or not allowing them to do what they do is a good idea.
I disagree.
You claim that people who are not "Christian" are basically a minority, while my experiences with the people I have come in contact with differs from that.
On these forums, there was a poll in which people were asked in they were "religious." The majority said "no." And while this may not be a proper sampling of Americans (given that this is a small niche forum which includes people from other countries), it is a sampling of the people I personally come in contact with.
Second, there are people who may say they are Christian, when what they really mean is that they go to church on Easter and Christmas, and that they have family with whom they associate whom they perceive as Christian. For example, I know quite a number of people who "come from a Catholic family" for whom religion has little or no impact on their lives other than that they may or may not go to church.
Third, there are the politicians and pundits who use Christianity as a political tool to forward their own personal agendas. These people say things to garner public interest in them, so there's no way to know how serious they are about their faith or if they truly have any at all because that's not how the game is played. People associate Republicans with Christianity, so if a Republican politician wants to get elected, he has to market himself as such or else the pundits will eat him alive for it. And the pundits aren't necessarily Christian either. They'd eat people alive because that's their job and that's what they do, not because they're genuinely interested on a personal level in the topic at hand.
Christianity makes up 78% of the American population. It makes up 33% of the wds population:the world's number one religion. Athiesm/agnostism takes up 4% of the American population. Just because people dont fit your definition of christianity doesn't mean they arent christian. In the eyes of the phelpses, you arent a real christian either. No true scotsman comes to mind.
We dont have this stereotype of america being super christian for no reason.
Either way it still doesnt matter when it comes to the law.
Christianity makes up 78% of the American population.
By what standard? Because someone gave them a form with "what religion are you?" on it and they checkmarked "Christian"? That doesn't really mean anything.
Either way it still doesnt matter when it comes to the law.
-.- ... again, referring to the group who are the primary reason why this law was passed makes the topic relevant to discussion. It's a separate topic, yes, but it's still relevant.
And I'm not missing the point by my taking your argument of "government is no good at regulating freedom, so they shouldn't do it at all" and extrapolating to a ridiculous level, if it properly conveys my opinion that some regulation of freedoms is needed and that this law is not a bad thing.
I don't see this law as infringing on first amendment issues. I don't. These people aren't protesting their government or promoting a cause (though they claim to be.) Their only legitimate purpose in having these protests is to make other peoples' lives miserable and they should be stopped. Our veterans and their families, who are private citizens, deserve better than to be mocked and publicly ridiculed.
To me it's not about first amendment rights. It's about respect, and defamation of private citizens. Isn't there some law against me following you around with a sign and shouting over everything you say?
It is indeed not a first amendment thing. From the perspective of German law, the fact that Obama even had to sign this thing is weird, and we're prettttty liberal with the demonstrations. These "protesters" repeatedly and purposefully infringe the right of military and family to have a peaceful funeral - maybe even the right to exercise their religion - and that closes the case for me.
The WBC's right to protest remains completely intact according to what I've read, they are just meant to do it in a place where they don't explicitly infringe on the rights of others. Which should have been the law in the first place. Freedom of assembly, freedom of religion? Ever heard of that? Same amendment, actually.
Free speech is about voicing and spreading an opinion, not about preventing practices some people happen not to like.
You claim that people who are not "Christian" are basically a minority, while my experiences with the people I have come in contact with differs from that.
Your religious body is red. The church that makes up my religious background is in pink.
Your denomination is literally well over one hundred times bigger than my family's.
I think I know FAR more than you ever will about being in a religious minority. You don't dress funny. Your church does not have horse and buggy parking. Your church is not morally opposed to stained-glass windows. Your denomination doesn't traditionally speak in some weird mother tongue that no other culture in the country has, nor are any of its adherents often confused for the Amish on sight. Your denomination isn't largely made up of the dying remnants of 1700s immigrant families stubbornly holding onto archaic cultural practices that demand that they separate themselves from the rest of the world at large. Your denomination isn't so small that searching for it randomly will probably bring up articles by people you are very closely related to. I've accidentally run into quotes by MY GRANDMOTHER when looking for vague searches for my religious background, because it's simply that small.
Don't pretend you know anything about being in a minority. You don't. You are a white, middle-class male. Your religious faith is the big man on campus. Denominationally, Baptists are the fastest-growing(largely by cannibalizing stricter or less popular Christian faiths).
"Christian" is not, and probably never will be, a minority in the US. "Practicing Middle-American Baptist" may not make up every person you ever meet, especially if you self-select for relatively young, left-leaning, educated populations, but the idea of not only a single denomination, but "Christian" as a whole, as a minority is so patently ridiculous on every possible level, no matter how you parse out the numbers, that it's downright laughable.
And I'm not missing the point by my taking your argument of "government is no good at regulating freedom, so they shouldn't do it at all" and extrapolating to a ridiculous level, if it properly conveys my opinion that some regulation of freedoms is needed and that this law is not a bad thing.
If that was the argument, it would still be ridiculous, largely semantic, horrendously bad debate form, and incredibly dickish, and anyone with a modicum of decorum would've avoided it out of a sheer sense of tact.
But that's not the core argument. It's not even remotely related to the core argument. It could easily be argued that it's the exact opposite of the core argument, because the concern is that the government is TOO good at executing a goal that might involve shutting up a very specific set of protesters.
Any time a law is enacted and enforced, it creates precedent. The Supreme Court snuck in its power to decide what was and was not constitutional through a relatively uncontroversial ruling. What laws mean, what their goals are, what the government is allowed to do, these are all defined by the historical uses of power and the checks against them. In legal terms, "We've done it before" is a very good argument for allowing them to shut down specific forms of protest in the future. This is not something that I like.
So what you're saying is that I know nothing about persecution because my experience is as nothing compared to yours, and that because you are also an atheist, you wish I'd just shut up already.
Also, I'm sorry that I don't debate like you wished I would.
So what you're saying is that I know nothing about persecution because my experience is as nothing compared to yours, and that because you are also an atheist, you wish I'd just shut up already.
What I'm saying is that because you are a member of the largest and fastest-growing religious body, and because you are the benefactor of the preferential treatment our culture gives to your specific religious/racial/gender/sexual orientation combination, that you cannot with any sort of intellectual honesty say that you are in any way a member of a minority group, or pretend that Baptists(let alone "Christians", though you seem to conflate the two terms) do not have an already very well-established and well-known cultural identity in the United States that is unlikely to be harmed irrevocably by 40 despicable bastards being loud and dickish sometimes.
Also, I'm sorry that I don't debate like you wished I would.
Yes, it really is too bad that you couldn't get around to advanced debate tactics like "reading comprehension".
Just because people dont fit your definition of christianity doesn't mean they arent christian. In the eyes of the phelpses, you arent a real christian either. No true scotsman comes to mind.
Claiming the "No True Scotsman" argument leaves no room to actually define what makes a Christian. If someone says they're Christian but does not adhere to some of the fundamental practices, are they still a Christian? I think by and large you can establish whether someone can be classified under the above if they share a similar set of beliefs and patterns, but that only has to do with cultural identification. Chyron is referring to internal, spiritual characteristics.
As Peter put it, "13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." (Galatians 5)
So yes, the Phelps are Christian by identification and shared heritage. However, Christianity since its inception has tried to parse claims versus practice. Christ himself did this when he said:
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7)
This is, also, why the state should never be involved with the imposition of religion. There is no secular criteria that can do anything but identify a shared heritage. That heritage itself does not connote that a person is actually, spiritually what they claim, at least if you adhere to the religious text they are basing their religious claims from.
Comments
To me it's not about first amendment rights. It's about respect, and defamation of private citizens. Isn't there some law against me following you around with a sign and shouting over everything you say?
I'm not. I'm annoyed that they parade themselves as Christians while doing something that so obviously contradicts it. Being that I myself am a Christian, I have a right to be offended that they publicly associate themselves with such as me.
Also, from a political standpoint, I disagree with anyone protesting at funerals, as I don't see publicly protesting private citizens as being covered under freedom of speech.
Oh, and for the record: I'm a Democrat, I voted for Obama, and I will vote for him again in the next election, so don't jump all over me as though I'm of the Christian Right who use their faith as a political tool.
Okay, so why not ban protesting funerals in general? Or protests, say, against planned parenthood where the sole idea of the protest is to shame and harass women who enter? Again, I'm not saying MAN I LIKE THEM WESTBOROS, I think they're really hateful and pretty miserable individuals, but banning the right to protest is kind of: ehhehhhnnngnnnnnn....
I don't anyone is saying that they're an upstanding group of people
Another thing to note: The Phelps family is primarily made up of lawyers. They make money from lawsuits. The fact that they get so much attention is only making them do more of these protests because it means the better chance that they can sue someone for assault and whatnot. The best option really is to just try to ignore the clowns and choke off their income.
The right to protest public figures (whose rights are different than private citizens), businesses, and goverments should be protected.
The right to harass private citizens should not. You mentioned harassing women who enter Planned Parenthood... for the record, I think that's many shades of wrong.
At some point, the court can recognize frivolous lawsuits as being just that. Frivolous. I remember watching a news report once about an old lady who kept suing her neighbors for stuff, and eventually the court refused to take any further lawsuits from her.
Also, I disagree about the idea of ignoring them. I really think that it will just cause them to be louder and more insistent. This bill being signed into law is a good thing, and should have been done a long time ago. Perhaps even a very long time ago, what with the flak Vietnam vets were getting back in the day.
As shitty as it is, I honestly don't think the government should be regulating this sort of thing UNLESS someone gets physically hurt or stalked.
But I guess that's where our opinions differ.
We are private citizens of this country. We deserve a certain level of privacy and respect. We deserve to be reasonably protected from hateful people who make it their goal to make our lives miserable. We deserve to be able to live peaceful lives, free from government or corporate oppression. Granted, such freedom comes at a price and is subject to debate by differing opinions.
Banning the protesting of our veterans isn't merely for the sake of the dead. It's for the sake of the living who mourn the dead and who are subject to being followed around by these hateful people.
Would you like for people to hold a picket line in front of your house just because they can?
Besides, if we can't protect the most heinous, ludicrous, harmful speech then it's a slippery slope before we start legislating political speech.
Just because some freedoms might be at risk, that doesn't mean we shouldn't bother with any of them.
(These are hypotheticals. I'm not saying I think this about you.)
We do have rights to more than just freedom of speech. And my rights to do what I want will obviously encroach on your right to do what you want, so it follows that we should be afforded some reasonable level of protection from being total jerks to each other.
Considering they were using their right like everybody else, they aren't being frivolous for suing someone who, say, breaks their car window out of rage.
And to your thing about holding a gun against someone's head and picketing someone's house, that is inciting violence and violating one's privacy, ie: being a stalker. That doesn't stop people from doing it regardless, but I digress. These people are just being asshats holding up signs and generally being ignorant and stupid. Despite this, they don't physically harass anyone or lay their fingers on anybody (they know this will get them in trouble with the law) so they aren't really doing anything but spouting off idiotic statements. They may be hateful asshats that hurt peoples feelings, but if we keep signing things into law every time someone feels bad, it's not going to be a pretty sight.
The sheer fact that you'd say some freedom is okay but others isn't, well, I just really can't agree to that. Free speech is free speech. It will occasionally hurt people feelings and make people feel really awful but to take one's right to it away is to take everyone's rights away.
there are more levels of abuse than physical abuse. There is emotional abuse, psychological abuse...
Children might say "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me," but you know what... it's just not true.
People can ruin your life by doing more than just breaking your stuff or physically beating you up.
Common sense would dictate that someone holding a gun up against someone's head is looking to harm a person or threaten a person. These people don't do that. They'll say people are going to hell, but hey, that's not really different from a much larger demographic of the American public. They're just louder and less picky about it.
As someone who has dealt with, for one example, dealing with kids who would stalk me on my mile-long walk home every day from middle school and would threaten to hold me down and rape me then throw rocks at me until I became a vegetable, I can tell you I know that words can hurt really bad. People who use language in attempt to harm are bad people and I can't defend them one bit. However if you tried to legislate speech to only allow statements that don't hurt anybody's feelings, then nobody can say anything anymore.
Let's have a picture!
OMG OMG OMG .. this is gonna the best album of 2012...
in my humble opinion ofcourse.
But shooting things is fun and useful! Unless they're people. In which case it isn't useful. It's very wrong.
As I political point, I disagree with power of the government to sign away the speech rights of a small group that is considered to be wrong by the government and the vast majority of people. I disagree that you cannot exercise your freedom of speech to protest the actions of a single person, that free speech only applies to speech about decentralized organizations. I also disagree that they're "protesting a person" at all. What they're protesting is a war and an organized event meant to glorify that war. Their ability to yell hateful things on publicly owned land is important, valuable, and needs to be protected. Because ultimately, many worthwhile thoughts have been branded obnoxious, hateful, wrong, vile, and disgusting throughout the course of human history, and the government's ability to shut those off on a case by case basis is a really scary precedent.
Strawman Dashing is a strawman.
An argument with Rather Dashing.
The primary (if not only, as far as I am aware) group of people who are protesting military funerals is Westboro. They parade themselves as Christians while doing this, which makes Christians, and Baptists, in general appear as though that's what we're about when it's not. Since the actions of said group are the primary reason why this law was passed, it is relevant to discuss their motives and how I disagree with them.
I can't help but feel that you're angry at me for talking about Christianity at all, rather than because it's a separate topic in the discussion.
In any case... what I'm basically hearing from most of you here is "the government sucks at protecting us from each other, so they should say the heck out of it and if people ruin each others' lives then that's too bad and they should get over it."
Sure. While we're at it, the government sucks at helping the needy so why bother anyway? We should just kick the poor and disabled out into the street and make them fend for themselves. If they suffer and die, then too bad but at least the government isn't getting involved. Also, the rights of corporations should be respected, so they should continue to to be able to donate as much money as they want toward political campaigns (in the guise of superpacs), and should be able to put any amount of whatever they want into our food and water without telling us... ooh, why even have government run water treatment plants at all? The government sucks at protecting us so why bother.
I'm going to go start a textile factory and see if I can lock my employees in while the building burns to the ground. I mean, who really needs these dumb fire regulations?
I'm not attacking a straw man. You accused me of suggesting that my faith and what it teaches should directly dictate or color the actions of the government: or at the very least attacked me for discussing the motives for the primary group responsible for the passing of this law, on the basis that the two aren't related when, in fact, they are.
No, I just find it to be a poor thought process to look at the statement of a legal issue, state an opinion on the legal issue, and then speak in highly factional non-legal terminology. I'm saying that whether or not you feel they represent a term so vague it almost as well may be "American" doesn't really have a bearing in whether or not allowing them to do what they do is a good idea.
I'm saying that giving the government the power to cut off protests it doesn't like on a very zoned-in, case-by-case basis is a frightening legal precedent. I'm saying that allowing them to do this now is giving the government a new superpower, and even if you believe that the people in charge now are entirely benevolent, the government is a system that can be filled with any new set of people every few years.
It's an invalid argument. It's not about what the government is bad at doing(which is nigh everything aside from wasting time and money), it's about what adds an avenue of abuse to a bloated system partially run by the corrupt and power-hungry.
Your example of helping the needy is actually a really good one for me, because to a certain extent what you said is entirely true. Post government-to-government aid, Africa's per-capita income is down, and twice as many people live on only a dollar a day. Direct aid, when used as a long-term solution, can very much do far more harm than good. This doesn't mean that governments should "do nothing", though "doing nothing" in many cases *would* leave the needy in a better place than they might be post-aid, but it does mean that long-term solutions need to account for more systematic problems, like corruption and abuse.
Entirely unrelated to the core point. For one thing, SuperPACs have little to do with free speech, since they are obnoxiously confidential, and they fall into the *real* issue of government abuse of power. The government has very little it can abuse by monitoring water supplies, either.
Still very much missing the point.
Except they're really not, or at least they're incredibly unimportant. Our government has signed into law a reactionary ban on a very specific form of public protest because most people find this protest to be vile and disrespectful. It's not the kind of power I think the government should have, and thinking the government should have this kind of power has very little to do with any one person's limited(though relatively common in certain demographic regions) view of what Christianity is. You liked the government action, which doesn't really have anything to do with Christianity at all. The political use of "Christianity" is an extremely inconsequential periphery element.
I disagree.
You claim that people who are not "Christian" are basically a minority, while my experiences with the people I have come in contact with differs from that.
On these forums, there was a poll in which people were asked in they were "religious." The majority said "no." And while this may not be a proper sampling of Americans (given that this is a small niche forum which includes people from other countries), it is a sampling of the people I personally come in contact with.
Second, there are people who may say they are Christian, when what they really mean is that they go to church on Easter and Christmas, and that they have family with whom they associate whom they perceive as Christian. For example, I know quite a number of people who "come from a Catholic family" for whom religion has little or no impact on their lives other than that they may or may not go to church.
Third, there are the politicians and pundits who use Christianity as a political tool to forward their own personal agendas. These people say things to garner public interest in them, so there's no way to know how serious they are about their faith or if they truly have any at all because that's not how the game is played. People associate Republicans with Christianity, so if a Republican politician wants to get elected, he has to market himself as such or else the pundits will eat him alive for it. And the pundits aren't necessarily Christian either. They'd eat people alive because that's their job and that's what they do, not because they're genuinely interested on a personal level in the topic at hand.
We dont have this stereotype of america being super christian for no reason.
Either way it still doesnt matter when it comes to the law.
-.- ... again, referring to the group who are the primary reason why this law was passed makes the topic relevant to discussion. It's a separate topic, yes, but it's still relevant.
And I'm not missing the point by my taking your argument of "government is no good at regulating freedom, so they shouldn't do it at all" and extrapolating to a ridiculous level, if it properly conveys my opinion that some regulation of freedoms is needed and that this law is not a bad thing.
I don't see this law as infringing on first amendment issues. I don't. These people aren't protesting their government or promoting a cause (though they claim to be.) Their only legitimate purpose in having these protests is to make other peoples' lives miserable and they should be stopped. Our veterans and their families, who are private citizens, deserve better than to be mocked and publicly ridiculed.
It is indeed not a first amendment thing. From the perspective of German law, the fact that Obama even had to sign this thing is weird, and we're prettttty liberal with the demonstrations. These "protesters" repeatedly and purposefully infringe the right of military and family to have a peaceful funeral - maybe even the right to exercise their religion - and that closes the case for me.
The WBC's right to protest remains completely intact according to what I've read, they are just meant to do it in a place where they don't explicitly infringe on the rights of others. Which should have been the law in the first place. Freedom of assembly, freedom of religion? Ever heard of that? Same amendment, actually.
Free speech is about voicing and spreading an opinion, not about preventing practices some people happen not to like.
Still a better candidate than Romneybott.
Not a fan.
Your religious body is red. The church that makes up my religious background is in pink.
Your denomination is literally well over one hundred times bigger than my family's.
I think I know FAR more than you ever will about being in a religious minority. You don't dress funny. Your church does not have horse and buggy parking. Your church is not morally opposed to stained-glass windows. Your denomination doesn't traditionally speak in some weird mother tongue that no other culture in the country has, nor are any of its adherents often confused for the Amish on sight. Your denomination isn't largely made up of the dying remnants of 1700s immigrant families stubbornly holding onto archaic cultural practices that demand that they separate themselves from the rest of the world at large. Your denomination isn't so small that searching for it randomly will probably bring up articles by people you are very closely related to. I've accidentally run into quotes by MY GRANDMOTHER when looking for vague searches for my religious background, because it's simply that small.
Don't pretend you know anything about being in a minority. You don't. You are a white, middle-class male. Your religious faith is the big man on campus. Denominationally, Baptists are the fastest-growing(largely by cannibalizing stricter or less popular Christian faiths).
"Christian" is not, and probably never will be, a minority in the US. "Practicing Middle-American Baptist" may not make up every person you ever meet, especially if you self-select for relatively young, left-leaning, educated populations, but the idea of not only a single denomination, but "Christian" as a whole, as a minority is so patently ridiculous on every possible level, no matter how you parse out the numbers, that it's downright laughable.
If that was the argument, it would still be ridiculous, largely semantic, horrendously bad debate form, and incredibly dickish, and anyone with a modicum of decorum would've avoided it out of a sheer sense of tact.
But that's not the core argument. It's not even remotely related to the core argument. It could easily be argued that it's the exact opposite of the core argument, because the concern is that the government is TOO good at executing a goal that might involve shutting up a very specific set of protesters.
Any time a law is enacted and enforced, it creates precedent. The Supreme Court snuck in its power to decide what was and was not constitutional through a relatively uncontroversial ruling. What laws mean, what their goals are, what the government is allowed to do, these are all defined by the historical uses of power and the checks against them. In legal terms, "We've done it before" is a very good argument for allowing them to shut down specific forms of protest in the future. This is not something that I like.
Also, I'm sorry that I don't debate like you wished I would.
Yes, it really is too bad that you couldn't get around to advanced debate tactics like "reading comprehension".
Claiming the "No True Scotsman" argument leaves no room to actually define what makes a Christian. If someone says they're Christian but does not adhere to some of the fundamental practices, are they still a Christian? I think by and large you can establish whether someone can be classified under the above if they share a similar set of beliefs and patterns, but that only has to do with cultural identification. Chyron is referring to internal, spiritual characteristics.
As Peter put it, "13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." (Galatians 5)
So yes, the Phelps are Christian by identification and shared heritage. However, Christianity since its inception has tried to parse claims versus practice. Christ himself did this when he said:
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7)
This is, also, why the state should never be involved with the imposition of religion. There is no secular criteria that can do anything but identify a shared heritage. That heritage itself does not connote that a person is actually, spiritually what they claim, at least if you adhere to the religious text they are basing their religious claims from.
Thank god I don't.
Edit: On Topic....
http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/pedobear-ruins-nestles-facebook-party-20120719-22byy.html
Found in one of the latest "What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Live" videos.