Pastor arrested before he could burn Qurans
Glad they could stop this dickhead before he cost more life's.
You are from the UK, and apparently not well-versed in American Constitutional issues. That's okay because many American's are confused about what Constitutional protections they actually have and what rights they deem they can deny fellow citizens.
One of the seminal events in American Revolutionary history was the "Boston Tea Party," where a bunch of citizens reacting to what they considered unfair taxation dressed up in Halloween fashion like Native Americans, and tossed hundreds of boxes of tea into Boston Harbor. This act led to further repressions and finally culminated in the American Revolution. Yet anyone doing something like that today in protest would be arrested by the local police.
Prior to the WWI anti-war demonstrations the standard was “bad tendency” i.e. speech could be outlawed if it had a tendency to harm public welfare. However, in 1919 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), to establish the “clear and present danger” standard.
"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that the United States Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree."
That was the standard until 1969, when the U.S. Supreme Court modified the standard to “imminent lawless action” in
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
This was further clarified in 1973 by SCOTUS in
Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105 (1973) when the Court held that violent speech is protected if it “amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time.”
Finally we have
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992) where teens had been charged with burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American family. The Court held that the First Amendment prevents government from punishing speech and expressive conduct because it disapproves of the ideas expressed.
All of this leads to the issue at hand:
is burning a stack of Qurans protected by the First Amendment? IMO yes it is.
It is irrelevant that some party somewhere overseas might get upset and take some violent action. That is their responsibility, and has nothing to do with restricting free speech.
It would be a different situation if Mr. Jones had taken his followers to a Mosque, stacked the Quorans in front, lit them on fire and then shouted “Now let’s burn this Mosque to the ground!” He did not do this.
Instead he petitioned for all necessary permits as required, but was denied for unspecified reasons. He then decided to act anyway. Had he not poured kerosene on the books prior to arrival at the rally site the authorities would have used some other reason to prevent the expression of his free speech, leading to a new round of Court review. This was his likely intent.
Had the city simply authorized the permits and let the people have their little rally, it would have made the news, created some controversy, and blown over in the USA. If radicals elsewhere (who need no special justification to either hate the USA or act violently) raise hell, who is really at fault? Have they not burned bibles? Burned our flag? Attacked our citizens for their own reasons?
I do not like Mr. Jones; in fact I hold him in the same contempt I do Fred Phelps and his Westboro Church.
But I’ll stand up and fight for their freedom of expression, however much it personally offends me, in order to preserve my own freedom of expression.
