So, I see the point you are making Bomb, I think. You’re trying to discuss, “honest question, what’s the difference”?
When we say that one shop isn’t selling cakes to gays, we complain that it harms their rights, even though they could go to a shop in the next town (maybe)
When we say that decreased voting booths in certain precincts make the lines too long and therefore it harms voters rights, even though they could have voted absentee.
When we say that Bush creating no-speech zones around his appearences harms free speech, even though they can go behind the fence on the far side of the parking lot to say what they want.
So what’s the difference?
Maybe we should make a chart with a list of examples and why this one harms rights and that one doesn’t. I think people have been trying to fill in those blanks for you, but maybe it’s hard for us all to use previously answered examples when they are hard to all see together. We forget that one’s been answered - or not answered previously.
I’m all for starting a chart; what counts, what doesn’t. What do we (any of us) support and what don’t we and why. That way no one wastes time bringing up something for the 10th time after it’s already been addressed. One can see the answer to “but what about” before just posting the same query again. And one can examine, “well maybe I didn’t defend that one very well.”
Some themes that we’ve seen throughout this thread:
- Unlike the cake maker who is trying to not do business with certain people and saying that’s a matter of “compelled speech”, the protesters are trying to STOP someone else from going about their business. Their “free speech” can happen anywhere and get the message across, but it has to be in this area to force an impact on another person. Free speech does not provide a guaranteed right to force an impact on someone going about their own protected-right business.
- Unlike the removal of voting booths, in fact what makes the removal of voting booths JUST LIKE the bullying outside of the clinic, the attempt is to prevent people from exercising their rights. So both the removal of the voting booths AND the ongoing every other day protests are both violating other people’s rights and the stopping of those two does not harm those stopped.
- Unlike Bush’s rallies, this is in a residential neighborhood and affecting medical clients. The protests are intended to STOP them from going about their rightful business COMPLETELY; to make it so daunting that they don’t get care. Bush still had his rallies, he would have just had to share the media time with another view. But his rallies were not impacted. Moreover he is a public figure doing a public thing.
Simply put, when the government produces &/or enforces laws that doesn't protect the rights of all parties, then they're violating rights.
You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't. Having relevant points isn't a matter of luck.You’d have a relevant point if Bush protesters were serial harassers with intent to intimidate civilians from accessing some legal service in the UK and creating a long standing disturbance in a specific neighborhood,She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.
So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?
But they weren’t, so you don’t. I’d say better luck next time, but that would be an example of hope over experience.
This is a Bush VS a local Australian community. Did Bush as the President of the USA ( a public official given a seat in the office by the people) have a constitutional right to prevent the people from protesting in a specific area? I'd so no. Do the people of a local Australian community have a right to request that their government do something about protests in their community? I'd think so. The Australian government seemed to have limited their response in both time and location as a result of listening to the people by giving the locals temporary relief and allowing the protests to presume after expiration. Now if some protesters ruin it again like I've seen happening in America where cities issued curfews due to bad elements of the Black Lives Matters movement, I wouldn't be shocked if they temporarily reinstated the restriction again.
Bush would have been right if the request came from the local community whos rights are being disrupted by protests. But to my knowledge, that's not what happened. What happened was a goofy wanna be cowboy without solicitation used the power of his office against the people.