Public Religious Speech a Crime?!

[♫anna♫]

www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/29/taking-liberties-arrested-for-reading-bible/ QUOTE:
Taking Liberties: Arrested for reading the Bible?
The video begins with Mark Mackey opening his Bible.

“Good morning, everyone,” he says to a group of 15 onlookers waiting outside the Hemet California Division of Motor Vehicles. “I would like to read a little bit of the word of God this morning.”

The video, shot in February of last year, ends with Mackey’s arrest.

“You can preach on your own property,” an officer from the California Highway Patrol tells Mackey as he leads him away in handcuffs. “Folks, this is what the United States is coming to,” Mackey says to the crowd, who were standing outside waiting for the DMV to open. “You can talk about anything you want, but you can’t talk about the Bible.”

Mackey is a reverend with Calvary Chapel Hemet, a conservative Christian church that practices an “evangelical ministry,” requiring public testimonials and Scripture readings.

Church officials believe Mackey was arrested because of “Christian bigotry.”

The officer who made the arrest disagrees, claiming he arrested Mackey for preaching to a public audience who had no choice but to listen.

“You’re not allowed to preach here," he told Mackey, “because this is a captive audience.”

Mackey’s lawyer calls that “ridiculous.”

“That doesn’t make sense in America,” says Robert Tyler of Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a non-profit law firm which defends Christian Liberties. “If the doctrine of the captive audience is going to apply broad brush, no one is going to be allowed to [preach in] a public park…that’s not America.”

Tyler also points out Mackey was cited for “impeding an open business,” but he points out the DMV wasn’t even open at the time.

“The DMV was closed,” he said. “They had no business arresting him.”

Not so, observes constitutional attorney Dan Conaway, saying those waiting for the DMV doors to open have no choice but to listen to Mackey.

“He's creating an intimidating situation for people who simply want to get their drivers licenses renewed,” says Conaway, who says it’s OK to preach in public, but not when your listeners can’t leave.

“He does not have the right to intimidate others and force them to listen and impede their ability to do normal business activities such as going to the DMV.”

Tyler points out that the “captive audience” statute requires more than simple intimidation.

“Mackey had to be threatening them. Is reading the Bible threatening?”

Tyler says that, in the end, Mackey has simply been charged with trespassing.

How can that be trespassing?” Tyler asks. “This is a public place. He was not blocking or impeding anyone. He was standing over 50 feet from the entrance. This is crazy.”

Mackey sees it in biblical terms.

“The devil is holding everyone captive to do his will," he said as he was led away. “Repent, and trust in Jesus Christ. Judgment Day is coming, folks.”

[Big Lin]

I think it's a difficult time to be an American now and I really feel for the people of that great country which I love so much.

On the one hand you've got the religious right trying to turn the US into a Western equivalent of the Taliban.

On the other you've got intolerant atheists trying to make it as hard as possible for people who are Christians but who DON'T want to impose their views on others - just to be free to practise them and to attempt to convert others to them through peaceful persuasion - are being demonised.

I find it deeply sad, just as I do ANY kind of intolerance.

I've just come off a thread on another board where I'm on the point of giving up in despair because even when I post FACTS and FIGURES showing that the MAJORITY of terrorism in the US and Europe is committed by NON MUSLIMS it gets dismissed.

And one of my sources is official police figures!

Anyway, rant over.

This man has IMO a perfect right to try and preach his faith.

Why don't these lunatics try and ban adverts on TV? After all, what are they but attempts to manipulate a captive audience?

[Hunny]

Maybe (this is just a maybe) the charges the police cited were just randomly picked legal excuses to stop the man - and the real reason the cops wanted him to stop was because since 9-11 if you get anywhere near a government building of any kind, you have to go through metal detectors, you cant bring your keys in, anyone anywhere near the place is watched and if they have no business escorted away, etc, not too far from what it's like at the airport.

It's possible.

Beyond that,
this makes me think of so many things that could be fought over
legally, like for example:why should the churches be allowed to
ring bells (make what many of us experience as just nuisance
repetitious noise people are "forced to listen to", even blocks
away) when anyone else who say:played some music that loud, or
a business that broadcasted a come on over a loudspeaker, loud
enough to be heard blocks away would be stopped? Why does the
church get exempted from the law?

This is a case of "being forced to listen".

I don't honestly know that they should be allowed. But on the
other hand, someone religious would rationalize why they should
be, meanwhile the real question shouldn't be about politics or bias
in the matter, it should just be about if it's legal to make excessive
noise -lengthy and repetitious- or not. ( I live next to a church that
rings bells a total of one full hour daily. They play their organ over a
loudspeaker along with the bells too (and she don't play so well
LOL!)) Well, I've yet to see anyone file a noise complaint, and
make an issue of the church's exemption, but it could come up. I
mean why would they have a protected legal right to make that
much noise? I question if it went to court, would we find they don't?

(Please don't throw things at me. I'm not in favor of "calling the cops on God". I just wonder about legalities is all.)


But as to the man's right to make a speech publicly, he had the right, or should have, but he should have known better than to do it in front of a government building . It makes me wonder if he chose that spot knowingly, because he WANTED to start a controversy..? (I mean anyone that lives in America knows what it's like now. He could have known he'd get in trouble there.)

I do see what he means by "so this is what America has come to", though, because it's a constitutional right to exercise free speech and freedom of assembly, but we've had those rights seriously curtailed in recent years. Demonstrators are typically menaced by horseback soldiers now, or corralled into a cage off area where they're told they can only assemble. The entire news media is owned and scripted by just four corporations now, so the messages of demonstrations get blacked out. It's awful.


Oh, and I just want to give a "WTF" to the cops for arresting him over it. Surely it would have been enough to tell him to go away, and why.

[Deleted]

Tyler points out that the “captive audience” statute requires more than simple intimidation.

“Mackey had to be threatening them. Is reading the Bible threatening?”



Read more: biglinmarshall.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=philosophy&action=display&thread=3343&page=1#ixzz1rCL7BHaI

Has he never read the Old Testament? Bits of it were written for the purpose of putting the fear of God up you...of course the Bible can be threatening!