If you know Fredricksburg, this is just astounding.

"What we try to discourage is anything not formally permitted that just sort of occurs spontaneously."

I wonder what else would fall under that category? Picnics? Perhaps running and laughing? I doubt any of that is "formally permitted."

But you can see their point too. Spontaneity is a real threat to a free socitey. And religion too. Or something.

I am from Fredericksburg and I hasten to assure everyone that WE'RE NOT ALL LIKE THAT. Blaster's right -- we're mostly sensible people here, perhaps a little quieter than average. And no one I know hereabouts would object to a river baptism. Mind you, I also don't know anyone who would feel they needed to participate in such a thing, but they wouldn't object.

Too bad the nannies among us are the ones with time to run for office.

Time to vote some people out of office, eh Steve?

I am a passionate advocate of both free speech and freedom of religion, but seriously, I think we're doing violence to the word "speech" if that's the constitutional basis for any threatened lawsuit, here. Call it equal protection, call it right of assembly, if you will. But calling it "speech" in a way justifies the frequently ridiculous interpretations of the word "speech" that we get from the ACLU.

Shocking when considered in the same context as the 5X a day prayer calls the moon God types want to bleat out of their Michigan mosque.

Keggin,

Consider the differences, however. The Muslims want to broadcast a religious message from their own property, and the opponents thereof say that amounts to noise pollution. In Fredericksberg, we're looking at the use of public property (I assume the property is publicly owned) by private citizens.

In other words, the first situation is a clear-cut nuisance case - either the loud broadcasting of religious messages is noise pollution or it is not - and the second is about the right to use public property according to the Constitutionally protected freedom of assembly. These two stories are not in the same "context" - and that fact makes the Fredericksberg story so much more shocking.

Aaron,

No disagreement here. I guess what I failed (miserably) to convey was this. Imagine the reverse. Say a Christian church wanted to broadcast a snipet of scripture 5X a day from it's bell tower, and that a Muslim group wanted to use a park for one of their rituals, perhaps daily prayers. Which group would take the most heat and which group might be expected to get the kid glove treatment?

I think we all know the answer to that.

I still see it as a speech issue, as well as -- in this particular case -- an assembly issue.

The assembly issue comes in only because they were asked to leave the park. But, the speech is there because they were originally told that the baptism might be offensive to someone.

It's not the presence per se of a reverend and some Christians, but what they were doing and saying that started the flap.

Did any of you guys click on the link, btw. There's some good reading in the comments. There's a reader's rebuttal to my fisking and I rebutted the rebuttaller and, I think, may have made a convert!

Thanks fer the link, Ace!
:D

"It's not the presence per se of a reverend and some Christians, but what they were doing and saying that started the flap."

True, but based on what I read, I don't think that's enough to make this a speech issue.

I get the impression that this Christian group went to the park for purely non-speech-related motives. That is, they did not intend to communicate some message to anyone outside of their group, as would have been the case if they were baptizing and proselytizing, or using the baptizing as a tool to proselytize other park-goers. In my opinion, because they didn't intend their activities as a communication, it wasn't speech.

My understanding is that I do not have Supreme Court precedent on my side. A liberal friend of mine and I were discussing a Free Speech question and he pointed me to a Supreme Court case that made the intent of the actor look irrelevant. But with all due respect for the Supreme Court, I think private debates about free speech (such as the one you and I are having) are not bound by Supreme Court precedent, unless we're trying to predict what the Supreme Court would do.

I think that the First Amendment speech clause is designed for a very specific purpose: to let me communicate with you or with anyone else without the government stepping in to monitor/censor/supress that communication. If I don't intend to communicate anything, an ex post facto reliance on the Free Speech clause strikes me as artificial, and beyond the intended scope of that clause. It seems to me that the ACLU is too willing to apply the Free Speech clause to non-speech cases, and I find that obnoxious. It is no less obnoxious when groups other than the ACLU do so, as well.

Just my opinion, of course.