Dear Davif F,

Thank You for your comments.

We don't have a Bill of Rights in Australia and
to me the Laws that currently exist (and there are
quite a few) that already inhibit free speech are
complex. Therefore I am still leaning towards 18D
of the Racial Discrimination Act which as I quoted
earlier "provideds exemptions. It states that 18C
does not render unlawful anything said or done
reasonably and in good faith for various purposes,
including artistic work and reporting on events or
matters of public interest."

I see no need to legislate against the offensive, disrespectful, and disrupting actions of the Westborough Baptist Church. I believe those they attract by their actions are far outnumbered by the thoughtful Christians who through awareness of the consequences of their irrational faith as practiced by of the Westborough Baptist Church may question their faith or at least appreciate the separation of church and state in the United States.

One of the steps that led to the separation of church and state was the revulsion of the Christian Sebastian Castellio against the execution of Servetus in Calvin’s Geneva. Castellio said, “To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man."

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10725 points you to the article I wrote on the subject.

Free speech is risky. A clever demagogue may persuade people to abandon their freedom. However, if government bans the speech of the demagogue and others the loss of freedom becomes a certainty.

Is more damage done by letting the Westborough Baptist Church continue their actions or stopping their actions along with that of others? I think more damage is done by shutting them up. Special cases make bad law. You cannot shut up that church by legislation without shutting up others.

I think I’d have to disagree with you there slightly, david f. Picketing at funerals is particularly heinous behaviour, and I think freedom of speech (like any other freedom) needs to be balanced with other freedoms such as, in this case, the freedom to not be harassed when burying a loved one.

I can’t imagine who else would be negatively affected by preventing picketing at funerals by, say, setting a large distance at which they must keep to do their picketing. That seems like a pretty safe way to legislate against it without accidentally capturing other more innocent behaviours. But even if some more innocent behaviours were captured by such legislation, I think it would probably still be worth it. It can always be undone if it’s not.

Here is a link from the Australian Law Reform Commission that
might be of interest:

http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/laws-interfere-freedom-speech

Dear AJ,

No special legislation is necessary. All Australia and the US except for Louisiana follow English Common Law. Under Common Law harassment is a criminal offense so the WBC and the Australian nutters who would harass women going to abortion clinics can be made to keep their distance.

Dear david f,

I probably need to look into the situation a bit more by the sounds of it. I don’t know much about American law other than when it was compared to Australian law in my legal studies, but from what I understand, it hasn’t been that easy when it comes to dealing with the Westborough Baptist Church.

Apparently police who try to move them on are threatened with lawsuits (some have even hypothesised that the church is nothing more than one big legal scam pretending to be a church). According to Snyder v. Phelps, the Phelps family appear to know precisely what distance to keep in order to achieve maximum emotional pain for their victims while simultaneously avoiding harassment laws. Their legal expertise seems to enable them to tread a very fine line to ensure maximum harassment with minimal chance of legal repercussions.

But this is probably more a failing of the harassment laws. Which are a bit off topic.