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Thoughts on the Corboba House Mosque: Build it!

August 17, 2010 in Law, Personal, Politics, Random Musings, Rants with 2 Comments

Usually my life is pretty simple and to the point: cat videos, tacos, baseball and catching up on what is the haps with my peeps. But lately I have been troubled by all sorts of political questions that have been plaguing but more specifically I just can’t get over the controversy and how the nation’s panties have been bunched up in a knot over the site in which the Cordoba House Mosque is to be built on. 1

First, let me clear my mind on the whole Mosque controversy. I support it. I would visit it 2 and if I had the financial means I would even contribute to the project. I am sure that this blog post might come back and haunt me if I ever want to run for some sort of high political office, but I am a man who must stick to my principles and that means even defending the most unpopular opinions of our time; hell I fully agree with the WBC in their right to protest the funerals of dead soldiers.

Adlai Stevenson once said “The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to the freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism.” We can substitute anti-communism with anti-terrorism and the horrible stigma that we as a nation have branded onto the good and kind Muslims that live in this country and for who the mosque in Manhattan is being built for. What we have done is judged an entire religious group for the actions of a few crazed lunatics. Doesn’t this go against the very ideal of religious tolerance which is a pillar that this country has been founded on? Or does religious tolerance and freedom only apply to those who believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior?

We can’t let our fears and prejudices dictate our public and moral policy anymore. We must conquer them in order for us to continue to be a great nation because if we do not we will continue to be a nation that is polarized that cares more about wedge issues and what should or should not be moral 3 than what actually matters: the betterment of life for all.

I was reading a blog post not too long ago about the Mosque controversy and what they wrote was just brilliant, specially this tidbit:

No matter how you personally feel about Muslims and mosques, you have to recognize that this is a one-way trip, a simple, irreversible binary choice. As there can be no real doubt that the Imam and his congregation have every right to build their mosque where they wish, it comes down to something more nuanced, and much more pernicious. Do you want people, either by dint of their popular majority or their frantic shrieking and hand-waving to have the power to over-rule the basic rights and freedoms granted to all Americans? Do you understand that if it’s just Muslims today, it will be Jews tomorrow and atheists after that and in the end, the battle for the [smoldering] rubble of the American experiment will be fought between Catholics and Protestants, with the victors laying claim to just another totalitarian theocracy? 4

We are threading on dangerous ground if we let the majority get its way. We have to remember that this nation is built on fighting for the minority, the small voice, the little guy not the other way around or else voices like that of this jackass would be the norm and everyone would be listening to him.  Islam is not terrorism. We are not at war with a religion. We are at war with a group of individuals who twist and bastardize a religious text in order to coerce weak minded young men into believing their cause. We are acting like children who are afraid of the dark and who are afraid of getting rid of their nightlight.

Wake up America. Doing what is right is not easy; its never easy. They are not being insensitive by building a mosque two blocks from the old WTC 7. The Muslims who will make use of the Mosque didn’t personally fly the planes into the Twin Towers. They’re not preaching jihad on us and calling us infidels. They are innocent. They have nothing to do insurgent/terrorists/islamofascists whatever label we have decided to call them now.

Let it go, America. Just let it go. We will be a better and more mature nation because of it. If I may, I will quote Adlai Stevenson once again: “Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.”

Notes:

  1. I refuse to call it the “Ground Zero” Mosque since its not actually being built in Ground Zero; its two blocks away from where the  WTC 7 stood. ↩
  2. can non-Muslims visit the mosque? ↩
  3. I’m talking about gay marriage and abortion, the two biggest issues that should remain out of the ballot. Why do you ask? I have a hard time trying to subject someone else to my own sense of morality. I firmly believe that each of us has a core set of morals that we all live for that makes us a functioning member of society and that allows us to actually come together and form a community. Morals vary from person to person, from community to community and from nation to nation. I will not touch this subject anymore since I fear hijacking my own post and footnotes with how I think these two issues are a distraction and makes us lose focus on what is truly important. ↩
  4. From It’s Not About THEM, It’s About US. ↩

Snyder vs. Phelps and the First Amendment

July 15, 2010 in Law, Politics, Random Musings, Rants with 3 Comments

The Westboro Baptist Church is a well known independent Baptist church and hate group that infamously pickets funerals of the LGBT community and of soldiers who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. They have been around since 1955, but it was not until 1998 that they entered the national spotlight when they picketed the funeral of Matthew Sheppard who was brutally slain for being gay. The WBC firmly believes that every tragedy in the world is a direct cause of homosexuality.

It is clear, the WBC is composed of the most delusional individuals to ever grace this planet. They despicable, vile, evil, horrendous, pathetic, and I can’t even come up with any more adjectives to describe how un-human they are. Given that, I do not in any way support their views and opinions. They are truly horrific in how they conduct themselves by trying to spread this horrific message of hate and its exactly why I find myself at odds with my views on their upcoming SCOTUS case in Snyder vs. Phelps and how I am agreeing and support the fact that they have a right to conduct themselves as they have because the First Amendment protects offensive speech and that they complied with all applicable laws of staying several hundred feet away from the funeral of fallen Marine Matthews Snyder. Their protest, no matter whether we agree or disagree with its message, falls under First Amendment protected speech.

SCOTUSWiki has all the documentation that you need on this case, from briefs to news reports so I won’t bother to go into full details of the case, but just mention some snippets. Sadly, my favorite brief is not included since it was just filed not too long ago by a group of First Amendment professors but you can find it here and here.

In this brief the argument is as follows:

First, the Supreme Court has long protected offensive speech because it contributes to discourse on issues of public interest and because efforts to censor it often result from antipathy towards the speaker’s message.  Second, the Court has never found a captive audience in a public forum based purely on the content of speech.  Abhorrence for the expression in the Snyder case does not justify creating a new dignity-based privacy interest that would allow censorship of unwanted or offensive speech.  Third, the First Amendment does not allow punishment of speech solely because of its emotional impact on the listener.  For this reason, the Court typically requires external indicia or harm before finding speech unprotected.  The Court should not permit evasion of these objective requirements by allowing tort liability under theories of invasion of privacy  or intentional infliction of emotional distress in the Snyder case.  Permitting tort liability for offensive speech would chill public discourse by allowing massive damage awards based on subjective criteria.  Categorizing the peaceful funeral protest in Snyder as unprotected speech contradicts the Court’s existing jurisprudence and undermines the very purpose of the First Amendment.

I find myself at a dilemma when it comes to this case. I abhor anti-homosexual speech. I am a firm believer in equality for all and what the WBC does is pure evil in my eyes. Yet, I can’t just censor their speech because I happen to disagree with it no matter how vile it might be; it goes against the principles and beauty of the First Amendment.

Mike Godwin once said “The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to ban the other kind”. The unpopular opinions need protection just as much as the popular opinions. We supposedly live in America the land of the free and of opportunity, not the land of you can only believe in what I believe and damn your own beliefs. So as much as sympathize with Mr. Snyder and find the WBC revolting, I hope that The Court rules in their favor. I don’t ever want to live in a world where no one defends my unpopular beliefs just because someone else doesn’t like it. It was even the subject of a Futurama episode! The WBC protest is one thing, but The Court ruling in Snyder’s favor could set a really dangerous precedent, not to mention a violation of stare decisis and would add more tarnish to Chief Justice Roberts’ Court. I can imagine really ludicrous examples of banning protest, but I’ll just wait for the oral arguments in the next term.

Its going to be a really interesting case to see argued. Will people abandon logic and throw out prior legal precedent and rule in favor of Mr. Snyder or will we, no matter how much we may detest them, side with Mr. Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church?