posted
I still don't see it as a "threat." It's unpleasant. Sure.
But I put up with a lot of unpleasant crap every day, and I don't get to have the police make the people doing it go away.
And why is that particular form of unpleasantness worthy of being stopped by coercive force? It's very similar to some arguments made by some anti-same-sex marriage advocates - being forced to publicly acknowledge homosexuality and same-sex affection bothers them and disturbs their children.
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posted
Because I can't see a reason not to accept the same level of same-sex public displays of affection that we accept for opposite-sex cases. I'm all in favor of stopping by force an atheist shouting "There is no God!" in the same situation if he doesn't leave peacefully once asked. It's simply not the place for that action.
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quote:Because I can't see a reason not to accept the same level of same-sex public displays of affection that we accept for opposite-sex cases.
But the criteria being proffered for making these distinctions is whether (presumably the majority or super-majority) appreciate the presence of these people and what they're saying.
So the possible majority (and I'm not saying it is a majority) making a distinction between same-sex and opposite-sex affection and not appreciating the former would support using the police to ban one and not the other.
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I absolute hate that people protest general conference and temple weddings and the like, but it's not worth giving up free speech in general to shut up those saying what I don't like.
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posted
Well, it certainly sounds like a threat to me. People advocating measles vaccines do not usually proclaim their belief in this fashion, although they may warn in a similar way in infomercials, I suppose. I've seen a few commercials like that.
quote:It's very similar to some arguments made by some anti-same-sex marriage advocates - being forced to publicly acknowledge homosexuality and same-sex affection bothers them and disturbs their children.
Do homosexuals threaten these people with judgment and death if they do not recognize them?
As I've said before, I do not have nearly the same level of problem with street preachers whose strategy is to hold a sign that says GOD LOVES, and call out similar phrases. That is more equivalent to a man with a rainbow flag or two men who chose to hold hands in public.
It's the hatred that I think is problematic. What kind of person gets off (see the first bit of the first video) on shouting threats? Is this really about religion or is it about power for these men? (That is, I've no doubt these people are true believers, but is it religion that motivates them to threaten, or the feeling of having power- real or imagined- in their hands?)
Freedom of speech entirely aside, I do not think there is anyone at Hatrack who would act in the manner of these men. Is it because they don't share their strength of religion or is it because they do not want to act in this manner because they feel that spreading a message of anger in this fashion is wrong?
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: But the criteria being proffered for making these distinctions is whether (presumably the majority or super-majority) appreciate the presence of these people and what they're saying.
I'm not in favor of laws against what we don't like. This, for me, is a case of "to each his own, unless it harms me or it limits my capacity of enjoying my rights". I find it impossible to demonstrate that two men kissing does either of those. It's not too difficult to demonstrate that the activities of those preachers were interfering with an authorized parade. I don't think I can be clearer than this, but I also don't understand why I'd need to be. Seems simple enough. :shrug:
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quote:Do homosexuals threaten these people with judgment and death if they do not recognize them?
As I've said before, I do not have nearly the same level of problem with street preachers whose strategy is to hold a sign that says GOD LOVES, and call out similar phrases. That is more equivalent to a man with a rainbow flag or two men who chose to hold hands in public.
But that's not the point. You've advocated allowing the preferences of the people to determine which content is to be subject to coercive repression. The justification given by the police for their actions included the possibility that the crowd might get violent. I've absolutely seen that justification used to stop particular messages before, and I've opposed it then.
You've advocated the use of such repression against one particular type of proselytizing when those nearby object. Glenn may or may not have advocated the use of such repression against any type of proselytizing when those nearby object. KoM has advocated the use of such coercive repression on all public religious expression.
It's all content-based.
quote:I'm not in favor of laws against what we don't like. This, for me, is a case of "to each his own, unless it harms me or it limits my capacity of enjoying my rights". I find it impossible to demonstrate that two men kissing does either of those. It's not too difficult to demonstrate that the activities of those preachers were interfering with an authorized parade. I don't think I can be clearer than this, but I also don't understand why I'd need to be.
If a particular form of affection makes someone so uncomfortable that they feel the need to leave, then it is - in some sense - interfering with the capacity of those people to enjoy their rights.
By the standards proffered in this thread - not in your post, and I was explicit about this in my first response to you - that could qualify for such suppression.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: By the standards proffered in this thread - not in your post, and I was explicit about this in my first response to you - that could qualify for such suppression.
quote:You've advocated the use of such repression against one particular type of proselytizing when those nearby object.
Of course it's content-based. what else would I base it on?
I do not think violence from the crowd is a good reason. Whatever reason the police stated is not necessarily the reason I agree it was a good thing.
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I don't think measles have free will - 'agency' in the sense that the Mormons use it. But sending people to Hell is clearly an act of free will on your god's part. To go lawyer for a moment, I identify three parts to a threat:
a) A desired action, "do X". b) A unpleasant consequence, "or else". c) The consequence must be imposed by a mindful agent - "Slow down or you will fall off the cliff" does not qualify; "Slow down or I will beat you up" does.
"Believe in God or he will send you to Hell" is a threat under this definition, while "Vaccinate your children or we will be at risk of an epidemic" is not.
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If you want to adopt the Mormon point of view for this, you have to take all of it: natural consequences for sins are not arbitrary according to God.
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If you want to adopt the Mormon point of view for this, you have to take all of it: natural consequences for sins are not arbitrary according to God.
The consequences of sins are exactly like "Slow down or you'll fall off the cliff."
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posted
I am adopting the Mormon understanding of the word 'agency', because it is a convenient shorthand for what I was trying to express. I am not adopting the Mormon understanding of punishment for sins, because the preachers in question plainly believe nothing of the sort, and neither, to the best of my knowledge, do most Norwegian Christians.
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quote:"Believe in God or he will send you to Hell" is a threat under this definition, while "Vaccinate your children or we will be at risk of an epidemic" is not.
So "don't kill me or the police will send you to jail" is a threat?
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posted
Indeed it is. That is, in fact, the explicit reason we have police: So that people can defend themselves by the threat of police retaliation instead of physical violence.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: So if it had been Mormons shouting it (heaven forbid (ha!) ), you'd be fine with it?
No, but me, I'm not objecting to the threats as such, that's Teshi's shtick. I'm objecting to the shouting.
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Then we simply disagree about the useful definition of the word "threat," and I'll stand by my opinion that it's a stretch.
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I wonder if shouting through a megaphone at strangers has ever converted someone to Christianity. Why do certain religious groups seem to think this is an effect method of preaching?
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I don't think anyone does, actually. I strongly suspect that the sort of people who do this aren't looking to convert anyone, they are looking to be warriors for their faith - to demonstrate their bravery and disregard for outsiders. In some sense these preachers probably got exactly what they wanted: Opposition! Threats of violence! Police suppression! It's a bit like trolling a forum, perhaps, only even more fun because you risk more than getting banned. I've seen atheists do similar things.
Perhaps you could cobble up some explanation in evolutionary psychology, where young men need to show off their bravery for the tribe by running needless risks. And going into a foreign tribe and openly defying them by shouting and making noise, that is both very risky and somewhat useful, in that it may establish a psychological dominance for the next territorial fight.
I don't know if I believe it, though. Occam's Razor would suggest that it's better to say "Some people are just jackasses".
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quote:I wonder if shouting through a megaphone at strangers has ever converted someone to Christianity.
With two thousand years in which it might have occurred, I'll bet it certainly has.
When were megaphones invented?
In any case, while you generally need a more credible threat than hellfire, many people have 'converted' to Christianity under threat of death or torture.
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posted
Agree with Teshi and King of Men. Any Mormon trying to attend General Conference in Salt Lake City while being yelled at by evangelical deminstrators and told they are bound for hell, etc etc, will understand where they are coming from.
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I understand. I don't agree. It is worth the price of megaphones and blasphemy around the perimeter of General Conference in order to preserve our freedom to assemble and demonstrate.
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posted
Intellectually I agree with you Katharina, but I find it really hard to. Practically, I agree with Teshi and KoM. I can't see that freedom of speech can be negatively impacted by having to show good manners towards those you are demonstrating against. It's completely possible to register your objections to someone's beliefs etc strongly, vigourously, without acting in the way the general conference demonstrators, (and the Phelpses) do.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Then we simply disagree about the useful definition of the word "threat," and I'll stand by my opinion that it's a stretch.
What word would you use to describe your police example?
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posted
If I say, "I'll press charges" then I'm threatening to take an action. If I say "The police will arrest you" then I'm making a statement about what others will do.
For example, I've told some people what not to do when police pull them over, and explained the potential bad things that could happen were they not to follow my advice. In essence, I've said, "If you do X, the police will do Y." That's not a threat.
If the officer pulling someone over says "If you don't stop doing X, I'll do Y," that is a threat.
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This has been bugging me for a while, but can people think of movies or a TV show where in the middle of a heated confrontation, someone says (paraphrased badly) "Is that a threat?" and the "hero" responds something similar to "No, its a fact" or "No, thats a promise".
There should be more than one, but I can't think of a specific one for now.
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quote:More to the point, was the parade for the purpose of allowing proselytizing? I have long felt that the American right to free speech does not mean that I have to listen to (or read) what people have to say.
Why is that more to the point? Unless you're going to ban all expressive activity not part of the official parade, why does the fact that they were proselytizing matter?
Your comment was that the crowd shouting (appropriately) at the parade was comparable to the proselytizers inappropriately turning the situation to their own purpose. It is the purpose, and not the content that you seem to be missing.
quote:
quote:As to the thread topic, these people came to a parade with a bullhorn, to divert the crowd's attention from the parade to their own agenda.
The bullhorn prohibition is an example of "time-place-manner" restriction, which is by its nature a content-neutral restriction.
The actual arrest was not about a bullhorn, though. More importantly for the thread topic, the arrest was celebrated based on the content it suppressed. The reason I keep harping on this, by the way, is that the thread starter has a habit of unapologetically advocating violent, totalitarian repression of religion and religious people. He might think it's cute, but I don't.
Neither do I. And I've made that clear often enough, yet you still presume to anticipate my intentions in a manner that suits your prejudice against me.
quote:
It sounds like you want to be able to suppress religious speech based on its content here in America, if I'm interpreting this correctly:
quote:More to the point, was the parade for the purpose of allowing proselytizing? I have long felt that the American right to free speech does not mean that I have to listen to (or read) what people have to say.
I'm usually referring to billboards, bumper stickers, and anything else that might have something on it that I don't feel I should have to explain to my children if I'm driving in a car with them. There was a time when nobody would've considered putting billboards up on I-95 advertising strip clubs, because it would have violated some kind of decency law. Today it's covered by the 1st amendment. I don't believe the founders had anything like that in mind.
It's not entirely clear to me - and I welcome your clarification either way - but it seems as if you're saying that proselytizing is one of those things that you don't feel you should have to explain to my children if I you're driving in a car with them. If so, it further seems you are advocating removing proselytizing from the protection of the First Amendment.
Two separate paragraphs for a reason. I have no problem explaining religious belief to my children. I would have thought the reference to strip clubs, and for that matter, the founders' intentions, would have made that clear.
quote:
quote:But when the dictates of their religion (proselytizing) interferes with the religious freedom of others, the police can protect the religious freedom of others by telling them (the proselytizers) to keep it to themselves or move on.
If you're referring to time-place-manner restrictions to which content is not relevant, I agree with you to an extent. However, if you are singling our proselytizing over some other forms of persuasive speech, I find this very disturbing.
You find it disturbing that religious speech doesn't justify disturbing a parade? Or that the first amendment justifies placing advertising for strip clubs in public view?
quote:
Luckily, current jurisprudence wouldn't allow what you might or not be advocating here.
posted
I can certainly see where these street preachers are coming from. The desire to proselyte however cannot be condenced down into one simple reason.
It's certainly understandable that with so many examples of bold preaching yielding results in the scriptures it's tempting for a repressed missionary/minister to want to shout out to the people and wake them from their apathetic slumber. Unfortunately that's about as effective as a 10 year old believing that if they just hop into a car and start the ignition they will get to a destination much faster than if they'd walked.
Effective proselyting to me is no less than an art that takes years to appreciate.
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quote:Your comment was that the crowd shouting (appropriately) at the parade was comparable to the proselytizers inappropriately turning the situation to their own purpose. It is the purpose, and not the content that you seem to be missing.
That wasn't the point of my comment.
quote:Neither do I. And I've made that clear often enough, yet you still presume to anticipate my intentions in a manner that suits your prejudice against me.
I don't think you think it's cute. Nor did I say so. Nor did I anticipate your intentions in this regard.
Seems to be a prejudice you have against me, assuming things that have no basis in what I've written.
quote:Two separate paragraphs for a reason. I have no problem explaining religious belief to my children. I would have thought the reference to strip clubs, and for that matter, the founders' intentions, would have made that clear.
It didn't, so I asked for clarification. Thank you for providing it. Something you could have done before assuming I was lumping you in with KoM above.
quote:You find it disturbing that religious speech doesn't justify disturbing a parade? Or that the first amendment justifies placing advertising for strip clubs in public view?
No. How on earth do you get that out of my saying I don't disagree with time-place-manner content-neutral restrictions? Or, more to the point, when I said that what I find disturbing is the willingness (which I again qualified with an "if" awaiting your clarification) to single our proselytizing over some other forms of persuasive speech.
You misunderstood every single thing you responded to.
Allow me to clarify: Almost everything I've been discussing in this thread has been about those willing to restrict persuasive speech based on its content. Had the opening poster not couched his celebration of this event in those terms, I would not have applied. Had others not explicitly advocated or seemed to implicitly advocate content-based restrictions, I would not have continued to respond.
There has been a side issue about allowing people's reaction to content and fear of potential violence triggering arrest for speech, but that, too, is linked to content.
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posted
My question, Dagonee, is that you object to the restriction of freedom of speech 'by content'. Now, content pretty much refers to every aspect of the speech such as subject (religion), tone (aggressive/disturbing); which I think should be combined with audience (children and adults in a celebratory parade), and position (not in a protest).
Do you agree of the removal of any kind of protester or preacher from any kind of situation, and if so, what are your requirements? If they were swearing violently while preaching, would you allow them to be removed, for example?
I agree with removal for tone combined with audience and position. Subject, such as very gruesome or disgusting comments, could also warrant removal if combined with an inappropriate audience and position.
What are your requirements in this matter, if they exist?
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quote:Now, content pretty much refers to every aspect of the speech such as subject (religion), tone (aggressive/disturbing); which I think should be combined with audience (children and adults in a celebratory parade), and position (not in a protest).
Restrictions based on the audience and not being in a protest should not be content based.
quote:Do you agree of the removal of any kind of protester or preacher from any kind of situation, and if so, what are your requirements?
Certainly. For instance, owners of private property should be allowed to exclude speakers based on the content of the speech. This includes the right to temporarily "privatize" public spaces, such as by renting a park pavilion, as long as such rentals are not themselves content restricted or by using such a venue for a specific public function. In the former case, the temporary private "owner" could exclude anyone for any reason. In the latter case, which could conceivably cover a government-run parade, the restriction must be content neutral, with the caveat that all speech not directly related to the function could be restricted. However, it would not be acceptable to allow some private expression unrelated to the parade and bar others based solely on content.
Reasonable time-manner-place restrictions on public property - again, which are not content-specific - are also feasible.
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posted
So, you would prefer no content or tone-based (but yes to audience-based and 'manner') removal.
So I'm assuming that manner would cover the preacher screaming obscenities at children.
It's merely an opinion-based thing. Thankfully, the world is more tolerant, usually, than King of Men. In my opinion, compared with you, I prefer a slightly more stringent, case-by-case ability to remove protesters and such who are acting in a disruptive, inappropriate or aggressive manner. If this has to take into account content when combined with audience in some situations, then so be it.
I'm not advocating arrest. I only approve of arrest when removal through request is not working, or being flagrantly ignored.
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quote:I'm not advocating arrest. I only approve of arrest when removal through request is not working, or being flagrantly ignored.
That is advocating censorship based on content, though, backed up by the power of arrest. So much for freedom of speech - it's only freedom of speech if the people with the power to arrest agree with what you are saying. That isn't freedom at all.
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posted
I think that I define "content" differently than I think you do, Teshi. By "content" I specifically meant the fact that that it was religious speech, not the manner of the speech. I would like to think that a person being intrusive and obnoxious about religion would be treated the same way that person would be treated if he were being intrusive and obnoxious about anything else. I would hope that if the preachers had been screaming about alien abduction or atheism, for example, they would have received the same response and that they weren't being treated more harshly because of their religious beliefs are unpopular.
KoM original post seemed to imply that the latter was the case. Instead of saying, "Yay, we are keeping people from disturbing others at a parade" his post seemed to say, "Yay, the government is shutting up religious people."
Does that make more sense?
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posted
I am also saying "Yay, we don't give religious people a free pass". I feel it is quite likely that in the US, any content-based discrimination would be in the other direction, because of the exaggerated respect for religion that we've discussed before.
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quote: I feel it is quite likely that in the US, any content-based discrimination would be in the other direction
Which is a good reason not to allow unelected people to effectively shut down speech based on content.
The real problem with the "move on, arrest if they don't" policy is that it effectively silences a lot of people. Moreover, there is no way to review the decision unless one wants to risk arrest. It concentrates an enormous amount of power with little accountability.
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posted
Of course there is a review, what was the court case about?
Edit: Never mind, I see what you mean - 'unless one wants to risk arrest', right. Then again, free speech that you're not willing to protect by civil disobedience couldn't have been so important as all that.
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quote:Never mind, I see what you mean - 'unless one wants to risk arrest', right. Then again, free speech that you're not willing to protect by civil disobedience couldn't have been so important as all that.
One of the points of civil disobedience is to secure rights for others that can be exercised without using civil disobedience.
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posted
In this case, a right which doesn't actually exist in Norway, namely shouting at people who are minding their own business. So they've had their review, and they've failed to secure that right, it being trumped by the right of Norwegians to be left alone and not be bothered. So what was the problem, again?
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The problem is you seem to think that I was talking about this case when in reality I was talking about general situations and rules. And I was doing so in the context of content-based shutting down of speech, and said so explicitly in my post.
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posted
Oh, right. I forgot that you never actually talk about the same thing anyone else is, at least not if it can possibly be shown that you might conceivably be mistaken. That's a problem, right enough.
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quote:Oh, right. I forgot that you never actually talk about the same thing anyone else is
Well, no, you see, Teshi and I have been discussing it for two pages now. You'll remember you yourself started this thread to celebrate content-specific speech restrictions, despite the story not actually being about such restrictions.
It's also strange you forgot, since the words were right there in my post.
Now that I think about it, it's not so strange. You do seem to often ignore or change important words used by others to qualify their posts when you respond to those posts.
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quote:Seems to be a prejudice you have against me, assuming things that have no basis in what I've written.
Here we go again, same old Dagonee BS. (to which Dag will riposte...)
Figure it out, Dag, the world doesn't revolve around you. I'm entitled to put in my comment without reference to whatever is happening in your little world.
And yes, you asked for clarification, after your usual assumptions about my intent.
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