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Posts categoriezed as freedom of speech

Petition to free Alexander Aan

Petition to free Alexander Aan published on 4 Comments on Petition to free Alexander Aan

I had no idea that the White House had established a web site specifically to host petitions. Some of them are quite wacky, but the one I got an email from CFI (the Center for Inquiry) about today is very worthy:

Call upon the Indonesian government to respect the freedom and dignity of all its citizens and to free Alexander Aan. Earlier this year, Indonesian civil servant Alexander Aan posted on Facebook that he doubted the existence of God. He was then attacked and beaten by an angry mob, and arrested for blasphemy. On June 14, Aan was convicted of “disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred or hostility,” sentenced to 30 months in prison, and saddled with a large fine. Now many Indonesians are calling for his death. By punishing Aan, Indonesia is violating its obligations to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees every person the rights to freedom of belief and expression. We petition the Obama administration to call upon the Indonesian government to immediately release Alexander Aan and improve its protections for religious dissidents and nonbelievers.

There can be no freedom of religion where there is no right to be non-religious. When simply admitting that you don’t share the religious beliefs of the majority amounts to blasphemy, it’s effectively illegal to not believe. This petition has a long way to go, and I don’t know whether it will do any good. But it’s simple to sign, so please do!

You have the freedom to make rape jokes. Should you?

You have the freedom to make rape jokes. Should you? published on 1 Comment on You have the freedom to make rape jokes. Should you?

There is no way, I think, to more thoroughly annoy a proponent of free speech than to claim that criticism violates it.

It’s hard enough defending free speech sometimes. People don’t see anything wrong with stopping the Westboro Baptists from protesting. Denying the Holocaust? Yeah, go ahead and outlaw that. Hate speech– what, that’s not already illegal? By all means, ban that too. And nobody really needs violent video games or faux-violent porn, do they? Banish those, along with the burqas!

No, I’m not going to address any of those topics right now. I’m just going to say that when you’re talking about violations of free speech, more speech which happens to be critical of that speech isn’t one such violation.

I am talking, of course, about the Daniel Tosh thing. If you’ve been under a rock lately and aren’t familiar, he made some jokes about rape to an audience and then heckled a female heckler who didn’t like them by joking about her being raped. Yeah, I know. I know. And now we have to have this big discussion about the claim made by the woman which was that jokes about rape are never funny, and alliances have to be created and lines drawn between people who agree and people who disagree, and actually some really good and useful and even funny discussion can arise from it. For instance, you should go read Lindy West’s piece How to Make a Rape Joke at Jezebel. I really enjoyed her last two examples of funny jokes about rape, because a) I hadn’t heard of either of those comics before, and b) as with all four examples she gives, the joke isn’t making fun of rape victims. It’s about mocking the rapist, and the mentalities that feed into that, and the circumstances of people who go about their lives worrying about either being raped or being thought a rapist, or both.

Two of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt and Louis CK, have weighed in with support for Tosh. Oswalt’s has been conflicted and convoluted, and Louis CK is one of the people commonly accepted as being able to do a joke about rape correctly– he’s one of West’s four examples, for that matter. To call this disappointing would be an understatement. Both of these comedians are so much smarter and so much funnier than Tosh that it’s like seeing Batman sympathize with a police officer who was accused of roughing up a suspect. And there is actually a similar sort of closing ranks going on– they’re sympathizing as fellow comedians, people who also get up in front of a crowd and say things that might make the crowd erupt in laughter or erupt in rage. And they’ve also dealt with hecklers, and know what a trial that is. Hecklers don’t just pop up in the audiences of small time comics, but that’s where they’re most common. Generally speaking, the “job” of a comedian who is faced with a heckler is to shout him or her down. To make fun of and embarrass him or her. Some comics have developed this ability into a high art, while others prefer to simply say “Shut up, or you’re out of here.” And that, of course, requires having access to some sort of security personnel who can make good on that threat for you, since the comedian him or herself is not going to interrupt the show, step down off the stage, and personally deal with the person who has been disrupting things.

So yes, dealing with hecklers is rough. And the woman in question was technically a heckler, though in the interests of fairness it’s important to point out that she didn’t mean to go see a Daniel Tosh show. She meant to see Dane Cook (also offensive, but mainly because unfunny), and Tosh came on afterward. She apparently had no idea who he was, was disturbed to see rape discussed as a possible topic of jokes to follow, and declared that rape jokes are not funny to this person with whom she was quite unfamiliar. And what followed was really unpleasant, regardless of whether you go by the described linked above or the account of the owner of the Laugh Factory, who ended by saying “If you don’t want to get insulted don’t go to comedy clubs.” After being quite happy to condemn Michael Richards for his racist insults, of course, because those “came from hatred.”

Patton Oswalt and Louis CK offend audiences sometimes too, and they have an interest in not wanting comedians who offend to be punished too severely. But by and large they have no reason to fear this punishment, because they don’t make bigoted jokes. Making bigoted jokes is easy, which is why why lazier and less creative comics do it all the time. It’s hard to fail by appealing to the prejudices of your audience, provided your audience actually has those prejudices. And since audiences have warmly embraced or at least chuckled at sexist jokes for a very long time, it’s not at all surprising that a lazy, uncreative comic would resort to them. Because they work, and most likely because that comic shares those prejudices himself.  It takes work to make a joke about a sensitive subject that doesn’t involve mocking the very people who are so sensitive to it, and it also takes caring about those people in the first place. Comedians have an interest in appealing to a broad audience, obviously, and it’s doubly, triply challenging to make it and be successful without mocking minorities or even being a minority yourself– if you don’t believe me, give Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story a watch sometime.

Louis CK is a straight white man, and he makes fun of himself as a straight white man– constantly. He is the definition of self-awareness, sometimes even painfully self-aware, and that’s why his jokes on these topics work. Clearly he’s thought about them, a great deal. My favorite Louis CK rape joke isn’t mentioned in the Lindy West article, but it’s this (NSFW language, definitely):

Here we have Louis CK talking about trying to do the right thing, and not being appreciated for it. And it’s funny, because he is earnest. He’s thought about it. When Louis CK makes a joke that portrays him as an asshole, you know he’s not really an asshole. Possibly people who are assholes laugh at those jokes because they think he’s identifying with them, but he isn’t. Trusting the comedian is an important element, but you don’t really have to trust Louis CK because he makes it abundantly clear what he’s being literal about and what he isn’t. This is not a description that applies for Daniel Tosh.

Somebody in the comments for the Pharyngula post about this whole debacle linked to this essay articulating why and when rape jokes are or aren’t funny, and it’s definitely worth a read. It’s clear, it’s actually very light-hearted and casual considering the subject matter, and it’s very thoughtful. Give it a read when you’ve got some time to think and consider.

You know what it’s not, however? A freedom of speech issue. A freedom of speech issue is when you’re being censored by the government. Massive crowds of people looking on what you’ve said or done disapprovingly is not a freedom of speech issue. It is simply the assertion and exercise of their equivalent freedom of speech.

Gloria Allred tries to use slut-shaming law to stop slut-shaming

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The most important thing wrong, to my eyes, with the fact that Gloria Allred is trying to hold Rush Limbaugh criminally responsible for his “slut” remarks is that it elevates him. It gives credence to the claim that his First Amendment rights are being infringed, because if Allred is successful they would be. No supporter of free speech should stand behind that.

But the added bonus of disturbing can be found in he specific legislation Allred wants to use to prosecute him: Section 836.04 of the Florida Statutes, which allows for the criminal prosecution of anyone who “speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity.” Jonathan Turley writes:

What is curious about Allred’s embracing of this law is that it is overtly sexist. The law suggests that a woman who is viewed as unchaste is so harmed that she constitutes a crime victim. Chastity is defined by Webster’s as “(a) : abstention from unlawful sexual intercourse; (b) : abstention from all sexual intercourse.” The law is based on the out-dated notion that a woman who has sex before marriage is damaged and subject to social stigma. To put it more colloquially, such a woman was viewed as a “slut or prostitute.” That is precisely the outrageous view voiced by Limbaugh in relation to Fluke and led to a worldwide condemnation. Now, Allred wants him prosecuted under a law that assumes that is based on the same assumption. The law was not designed to prevent women from being called sluts. Laws like Florida’s code provision were designed on the belief that a woman who is unchaste is a slut — and that “good” women should never be accused of sex before marriage. So Allred wants Limbaugh prosecuted for saying Fluke is a slut based on the law that effectively treats unchaste women as sluts. It does not protect men because an unchaste man was viewed under these dated laws as just a normal man. A man was not viewed as harmed or demeaned by being sexually active. Only a woman was harmed by the suggestion of sexual activities. Not also the law only protects women who are “falsely” accused of being unchaste. Thus if a woman has been sexually active before married, she would presumably not be protected under the law.

It’s troublesome enough that so many people who are happy to condemn Limbaugh for his remarks without mentioning that it would be wrong to call Fluke a slut even if she did stand up in front of Congress and testify that she slept with five different men every day. But the law Allred wants to use against Limbaugh buys into the exact same patriarchal, sexist thinking that she seeks to prosecute. In no way does this effort score points for free speech or feminism, and so merits a big thumbs down from this fan of both.

The appropriate response when someone says that Fluke (or anyone) is a slut is not “No she isn’t.” It’s “I’m not going to accept that it’s your business to morally judge her sex life, which is what you just declared by using that word.” It takes longer to say, but it notes something important, something definitely worth noting.

Jay Leno vs. some angry Sikhs

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From BBC News:

A Leno skit showed the temple as the summer home of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Mr Romney has faced taxation questions over his huge wealth and many Sikhs are angry the temple has been depicted as a place for the rich. The Sikh community has launched an online petition and an Indian minister called the comments “objectionable”. Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi told reporters: “It is quite unfortunate and quite objectionable that such a comment has been made after showing the Golden Temple.” Mr Ravi said the Indian embassy would take up the matter with the US state department, the Press Trust of India reported. He said: “The Golden Temple is the Sikh community’s most sacred place… The American government should also look at this kind of thing. “Freedom does not mean hurting the sentiments of others… This is not acceptable to us and we take a very strong objection for such a display.”

The Golden Temple is….well, it is what you might expect: an enormous building, literally covered in gold. Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab, India looks like a monument to ostentatiousness. Leno’s writers could have done a GIS for “fancy building” and picked the most impressive one that showed up, but part of the joke  I’m guessing in choosing to use the Golden Temple as Romney’s summer home is to suggest that he is obscenely wealthy. Not just well off, not just private jet rich, but affluent to the extent that it seems offensive. Profane. You know, like the kind of guy who would live in a monument to someone else’s religion if he found it sumptuous enough. Here’s the bit:

You have to admit, in comparison with the preceding photos of quite nice but not crazily impressive homes belonging to Gingrich and Paul, respectively (which I assume are their actual residences), following it up with what appears to be the fanciest building ever to exist and calling it Romney’s “summer” home is pretty funny. It’s funny in part because it doesn’t remotely even look like a home. Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, pointed out in a statement that Leno’s use of the photo is both a) Constitutionally-protected and b) obviously satire. And it was satire of Romney, not of Sikhs. But even if it was making fun of Sikhs, it’s still protected. That is because freedom of speech does, in fact, include “hurting the sentiments of others.” If it doesn’t, well…that hurts my sentiments. Further appreciation to Nuland for saying that the United States government respects India and its citizenry without saying that the it respects Sikhism.

The online petition organised by members of the US Sikh community says Leno has been guilty of derogatory comments on Sikhs before. It adds that “Jay Leno’s racist comments need to be stopped right here”. Petition signatory Simran Kaur says: “Jay Leno must apologise and promise not to make any direct or oblique references to Sikhs or their places of worship.” Leno has not yet commented on the matter.

Not being familiar with Leno’s show, I have no idea what “derogatory comments” this refers to. But if it’s simply making references to Sikhs or their places of worship, acknowledging that they exist, my question would be…why? Surely it would be worse to have your existence ignored?

I also don’t know what “objectionable comment has been made after showing the Golden Temple,” because so far as I can tell there was no comment after showing it– simply depicting it was the gag. I can’t help but wonder if Ravi and the community who organized this petition actually saw the bit in question and understand it.

ETA: From Ken at Popehat:

First up, we have Dr. Randeep Dhillon! Dr. Dhillon is suing Jay Leno. Is he suing Jay Leno for being a trite, phone-it-in placeholder? NO! There’s no California cause of action for that! SAG would never allow it! No, Randeep Dhillon is suing Jay Leno for a lame joke about Mitt Romney suggesting that his vacation home was the Golden Temple of Amritsar, a holy site for Sikhs! Dr. Dhillon says that by making this joke, Leno “exposes plaintiff, other sikhs and their religion to hatred, contempt, ridicule and obloquy because it falsely portrays the holiest place in the Sikh religion as a vacation resort owned by a non-Sikh.” He’s backed up by an Indian foreign affairs minister who says “freedom does not mean hurting the sentiments of others.” Congrats, Dr. Dhillon! You win a date with California’s robust anti-SLAPP statute! You’re going to pay Jay Leno’s attorney fees in this case, which I will estimate to be $50,000! And because some people will generalize about Sikhs based on the act of one asshole — you — you’ve just done more to expose Sikhs to hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquy than that threadbare hack Leno ever could! Way to go!

“In God We Trust” and the right not to speak

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The state of Georgia is considering a bill which requires that “In God We Trust” be on the license plates of all registered vehicles, unless the owner pays to have the slogan covered up:

Georgia SB 293 would amend current law to mandate that, starting next summer, all plates would be imprinted with the religious declaration. If someone does not wish to exhibit this statement of faith, they would be required to purchase a sticker from the state displaying the name of their county that could be used to cover “In God We Trust.”  The bill text currently available on the legislature’s website really drives home the dramatic change in attitudes by the Assembly, as you can clearly see what has been crossed out and changed. While displaying the county name is the current “default” choice for Georgia drivers and alternatively they may purchase an “In God We Trust” sticker, this bill would directly swap the two, making the religious motto the routine option.  Mandating that individuals pay money to the government in order to not flaunt religious views is absolutely ridiculous. As the website Georgia Politico aptly puts it, “In other words, if you feel the government should not be establishing a religion, you are going to have to pay to prove it.”

  …and if you do decide to prove it, it’s possible you might be targeting yourself for retaliation by anyone who considers a refusal to display the message to be an offense. Regardless of whether your reason is an actual disagreement with the sentiment or a disapproval of the requirement to display it, observers are invited to form their own interpretations and make judgments on that basis. Being forced to decide whether it’s appropriate to take this risk is particularly strange, as Secular News Daily points out, because the “In God We Trust” plate was already one of the options available to Georgia drivers.

Over at Dispatches, chaosof99 notes that even though the statement in question is the nation’s motto, a person could make a legitimate (in the eyes of the court) objection to the plates based on a violation of First Amendment rights:

Wooley v. Maynard. Came across that quite by coincidence because for a reason I no longer remember I looked up “Live free or die” on wikipedia.  Anyway, it’s unconstitutional to force people to display an opinion or sentiment against their will. The Wooley v. Maynard case is already a Supreme Court precedent for this, and also pertains to slogans on license plates.

I had not previously heard of Wooley v. Maynard, but it’s definitely a story of having courage of one’s convictions. A Jehovah’s Witness couple (the Maynards) were unwilling to display the New Hampshire state motto on their license plate and opted to cover it up. Since a New Hampshire statute deems it an offense to obscure any figures or letters on a plate, they were cited for it. George Maynard showed up in court in 1974, represented himself, and plead not guilty, citing religious objections to displaying the motto. He was found guilty but a $25 fine was suspended due to “good behavior.” The following year when he was cited again, Maynard again showed up in court and plead not guilty. He was fined $50 and given a six month sentence in the Grafton House of Corrections, which was also suspended although the court ordered him to pay $25 for the first offense. Maynard explained that he would not pay either fine as a matter of conscience, whereupon the court sentenced him to fifteen days in jail, which he served.

The following year, the Maynards sued in New Hampshire’s district court against enforcement of the original statute under which George had been cited, in response to which the judge issued a temporary restraining order against any further arrest or prosecution of them. Because the couple’s suit sought an injunction against the state of New Hampshire on the grounds of unconstitutionality, the case went to the Supreme Court, who agreed with the Maynards in a 6-to-3 decision:

New Hampshire’s statute in effect requires that appellees use their private property as a “mobile billboard” for the State’s ideological message – or suffer a penalty, as Maynard already has. As a condition to driving an automobile – a virtual necessity for most Americans – the Maynards must display “Live Free or Die” to hundreds of people each day. The fact that most individuals agree with the thrust of New Hampshire’s motto is not the test; most Americans also find the flag salute acceptable. The First Amendment protects the right of individuals to hold a point of view different from the majority and to refuse to foster, in the way New Hampshire commands, an idea they find morally objectionable.

Well said. Let’s hope that, if necessary, the same will apply to people made to display this ideological message.

First Amendment quiz

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Reading all of the commentaries yesterday about how little Americans appreciate the significance of Independence Day (or the 4th of July, if you’re feeling generic) made me wonder how much of that is actually true and how much is cynicism. Do people really not know what yesterday was originally intended to celebrate?

I laughed at more than a few tweets from people saying things like “400 years ago today Jesus, George Washington and Martin Luther King Junior chased the Russians out of America and made this a great nation!” But really….do people not know what the word “independence” is referring to?  You know, the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Being endowed by….something or other with unalienable rights which means we should throw off governmental powers which do not acknowledge and protect those rights, and so on?  Just in case, Ed Brayton explains what the deal is:

It was originally supposed to be written by Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman of the founding fathers, but he was in ill health and didn’t feel he would be able to do undertake the task. It then fell to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, with each arguing that the other should write it. Adams eventually prevailed in the argument and Jefferson was assigned the task of writing the Declaration. When he finished the first draft, it was then circulated to three others — Franklin, Adams and Robert Livingston. Franklin and Adams did most of the editing, suggesting deletions, additions and changes to wording in many places. Then the final draft was prepared and circulated among the whole group for their agreement and their signatures. We forget today what a revolutionary document it was. The assertion that each individual had rights that were unalienable and that the principal job of government is to secure those rights had never before been declared so boldly. The fact that the men who ratified that document so often failed to live up to the principles they declared only testifies to how novel those concepts were — perhaps still are, at least in practice. It is to those principles — liberty, equality, justice — that I swear allegiance. Not to governments, which so often offer those principles as justification while actively subverting them in any number of ways. Not to a colored piece of cloth. Nearly every political question can — must — be answered in reference to those basic principles. The answers aren’t always easy, of course, but the questions cannot be correctly analyzed, in my view, except by using those axiomatic reference points.

The ten original amendments that comprised the Bill of Rights were not ratified on that day….not for many more years. But because I firmly believe that the rights described in the First Amendment are unalienable and yet also poorly understood, I think it’s fitting to mention this 20 question quiz on it here.  See how you do. If poorly, hey…you get to learn something.  If well, it’s still good to be reminded of all of protection of freedoms packed into that brief passage.

Being rude to the police: dumb, not criminal

Being rude to the police: dumb, not criminal published on 6 Comments on Being rude to the police: dumb, not criminal

…and it is only dumb because it will be treated, often successfully, as criminal. But not this time:

Man who gave trooper the finger has charge dropped
A harassment charge has been dropped in the case of a 35-year-old Colorado man who faced prosecution for displaying his middle finger to a Colorado State Patrol trooper. The State Patrol said in a statement late Friday that it asked that the case be dropped. The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that while the gesture may be have been rude, it amounted to protected free speech. According to the ACLU, Shane Boor was driving to work in April when he saw a trooper pull over a car. As Boor passed by, he extended his middle finger in the trooper’s direction. Boor was later stopped and received a criminal summons ordering him to appear in court to answer a criminal charge of harassment, which carries a possible six-month jail term.

Ed Brayton notes:

We’ve got a whole lot of police officers in this country who truly believe that they cannot be questioned or criticized the way any other citizen can, that their tender feelings being hurt allows them to harass and arrest people who have broken no law. If you dare to question them, they’ll arrest you for “disorderly conduct,” that famous catch-all crime that really means “annoying a police officer.”
If you flip off another person, you can’t be arrested for it. Yet this officer actually believed that flipping him off was an arrestable offense. We need some serious retraining for police officers in this country. And we need to start penalizing those who overstep their legal authority in a big way.

Let’s unpack…

Is flipping off a police officer rude? Yes, because flipping people off is a deliberately rude act.
Is being rude always bad? I don’t think so.
Was it wrong to be rude to a police officer in this instance? Probably, because a person doesn’t deserve contempt simply for being a cop.
Was it dumb? Probably, if you think it’s dumb to endanger yourself.
But, should such an act be considered endangering oneself? Not in a better world.
Is this a better world? Sadly, no.

Was flipping off the cop an act of civil disobedience? Maybe; there’s no way to tell from the article. But if that is why Boor did so, then my hat’s off to him. To my rather odd civil liberties-loving mind, the idea of one person being rude to a cop because he hates cops is repellant. But the idea of everybody doing so, to make a point, is awesome. Forget Everybody Draw Muhammad Day; let’s have Everybody Flip Off a Cop Day.

Police are, or are supposed to be, public servants.  It does not amount to advocating hatred or denigration of them to say that expressing contempt for them is no worse (and no better) than doing so for anyone else. Certainly not to say that the idea of someone being arrested for it, let alone imprisoned, is absolutely insane.  Yet it is also insane how many officers do not appear to realize that “contempt of cop” is not a crime.  And, most disturbing of all, how many people don’t realize it.

Dumb, not criminal. Thanks again, ACLU.

How not to counter-protest

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Gawker reports that the Westboro Baptist Church were met in Mississippi by some people who decided to try and out-douchebag them. And succeeded:

The feel-good blog item of the day is the story of when the small town of Brandon, Mississippi successfully foiled Westboro Baptist Church’s plan to protest a Marine’s funeral. (Here is a video of the refreshingly protester-free road as Marine Staff Sgt. Jason Rogers is returned home on April 14.) How’d they do it? They sicced the police on them and beat them up.    Here is the story that is blowing up the blogosphere, which was originally posted on an Ole Miss sports message board:  

[Westboro Baptist Church] did show up, a few showed up a couple of days early.
 A couple of days before, one of them ran his mouth at a Brandon gas station and got his ass waxed. Police were called and the beaten man could not give much of a description of who beat him. When they canvassed the station and spoke to the large crowd that had gathered around, no one seemed to remember anything about what had happened.  

Rankin County handled this thing perfectly. There were many things that were put into place that most will never know about and at great expense to the county. Most of the morons never made it out of their hotel parking lot. It seems that certain Rankin county pickup trucks were parked directly behind any car that had Kansas plates in the hotel parking lot and the drivers mysteriously disappeared until after the funeral was over.   

Police were called but their wrecker service was running behind and it was going to be a few hours before they could tow the trucks so the Kansas plated cars could get out. A few made it to the funeral but were ushered away to be questioned about a crime they might have possibly been involved in. Turns out, after a few hours of questioning, that they were not involved and they were allowed to go on about their business.   

Ranking [sic] deserves a hand in how they handled this situation.        

As much as we despise the Westboro Baptist Church, it seems like police illegally detaining people in order to squelch atrocious and unpopular but constitutionally-protected free speech, is not something we should encourage! Although the part about parking cars behind them was pretty good.

No, it wasn’t. That’s also against the law, I’m pretty sure, and even if it wasn’t it would still be a horrible way of attempting to combat people whose views you don’t like.  Is it really so hard to grasp that the way to protest speech is with more speech?  That actually attacking people or blocking their cars into a parking lot so they can’t drive anywhere just makes you the bad guy?  The glee with which this post describes the effort by a mob of people who don’t like the WBC to threaten, silence, and physically attack them is disgusting. “What they say is hateful, so we’re entitled to take any action we want against them.” No, you’re not. You’re entitled to speak back, and to ostracize them if you want. That’s it.

The WBC has announced that they will be protesting at ReasonFest, a gathering for atheists and agnostics at the University of Kansas on May 6th, and it sounds like a counter-protest is planned.  I’m betting that means people will show up in support of ReasonFest, of the right to be an atheist or agnostic, and to repudiate everything the WBC stands for. And I’m betting that means they will hold signs, shout things, and attempt to have conversations with WBC protesters if possible, which is what a counter-protest is supposed to be: the use of free speech to condemn the content of someone else’s free speech.

Update

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Terry Jones is on trial this morning by a Michigan jury which is going to decide whether or not he can protest at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn without having paid a $100,000 “peace bond.”  If that makes you do a double-take and say “Whaa?” I’m right there with you.

If it doesn’t, here’s why it should: the content of Jones’ speech is irrelevant to the matter of whether he should be allowed to protest. The Supreme Court has determined this time and time again. So long as his protest is peaceful he has a right to do it, and you cannot attempt to prevent someone from exercising their rights by charging them an enormous amount of money to do so. Ed at Dispatches writes:

All of this is blatantly unconstitutional. The boundaries of the First Amendment are not determined by juries. And the practice of requiring those who wish to protest to put up bonds before holding controversial protests was declared unconstitutional decades ago by federal courts. This principle goes back to the civil rights era, when cities run by racist leaders who wanted to prevent legitimate civil rights marches would try to charge those who organized those protests for the extra police protection needed to keep them safe from the KKK and others who might react violently to them. That it now involves someone who preaches against civil rights for Muslims is not a legally relevant difference; the government must protect the right to protest and protect those who engage in protest from violent reaction no matter how heinous the message of the protest may be. . .  No matter what the jury decides tomorrow, the state court’s ruling is baffling and almost certain to be struck down by a higher court if challenged.

The ACLU supports Jones’ right to protest, and so do more Dearbon Muslims:

Majed Moughni, a Dearborn attorney, agrees that Jones has the right to protest. Moughni is not a fan of Jones, having burned him in effigy last year outside his Dearborn home because he had threatened to burn the Quran. Jones later oversaw the burning of a Quran last month. But Moughni says it’s wrong for the city and county to try to hinder Jones’ rights. Moughni added that this is turning Jones into a hero. “Instead of him being the bad guy, now he’s the hero,” Moughni said. “They’ve turned him into a hero of the First Amendment.” “The prosecutors should withdraw their demands and let him speak as he wishes, which is his right under the Constitution.” 

Update: According to the Detroit Free Press,

A Dearborn jury just sided with prosecutors, ruling that Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp would breach the peace if they rallied at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn 

Demonstration denied in Dearborn; Dawud declares doubts

Demonstration denied in Dearborn; Dawud declares doubts published on 1 Comment on Demonstration denied in Dearborn; Dawud declares doubts
Dawud Walid

Anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones takes his show to Michigan…or at least attempts to. In a bid to become to Muslims what Fred Phelps has been to gays and the military, Jones announced that he and his church would be protesting at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, the largest mosque in North America. But city officials in Dearborn are not keen to allow that:

Concerned about a potential outbreak of violence, Wayne County prosecutors have filed a complaint in court that seeks to compel Florida pastor Terry Jones — who oversaw the burning of a Quran last month — not to rally outside an Islamic center in Dearborn this week. . . Filed Friday in 19th district court in Dearborn, prosecutors say that if Jones shows up outside the center, “the greatest danger is the likelihood of a riot ensuing complete with the discharge of firearms.”

Maybe they should have asked local Muslims first what they thought:

Not everyone shares the Wayne County Prosecutor’s concern that Dearborn will be unable to constrain its passions in the face of Terry Jones’ planned protest Friday.  Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations – Michigan says he’s doesn’t support the legal effort to thwart Jones’ event.  He told the [Detroit] Free Press that “their action innocently played into Jones’ objectives, which is to paint Dearborn as a pro-sharia city that’s oppressing Christians, which is, of course, not true.”  Walid also said the court filing inaccurately tries to “equate the actions of zealots in Afghanistan with Muslim Americans in Dearborn.” He described the Dearborn community as a peaceful one that would not harm Jones.

Terry Jones

If you’re going to let the KKK march in Skokie, you have to let Islamophobes with odd mustaches demonstrate in Dearborn. In addition to it being a violation of the First Amendment to prevent Jones’ demonstration, it is also as Walid points out a kind of slap in the face to American Muslims to assume that they will be provoked to violence. Normal, sane people will not interpret banning the protest as having pro-sharia motivations, but extreme right-wingers who like to talk about “creeping sharia” and have successfully (and redundantly) banned its implementation in Oklahoma will. In reality, it is a well-intentioned but deeply misguided violation of a bigoted group’s right to freedom of speech. Jones’ demonstration permit has been denied pending a court appearance:

Jones is due in 19th District Court in Dearborn on Thursday to answer prosecutors’ claims that his demonstration could cause a riot and demands he post a “peace bond” to cover police costs.