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Is Religious Speech more protected under the Constitution than Political Speech?

Somerville

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David Barton, well-known Liar for Jesus and pseudo-historian, apparently believes his speech and that of others who have the same religious beliefs as his is more protected than ordinary, non-religious speech.

David Barton Claims Constitution Gives Him ‘More Protection’ Because He’s Religious

“Secular speech is protected by the Constitution,” Barton said, “but religious speech has several protections in the First Amendment.”

Barton said that while everyone has a right to free speech, religious speech and expression are “protected by three clauses,” which means that his speech is entitled to “more protection, if you will, than just normal, secular speech.”

He insisted that the idea that secular speech or expression should receive the same protections as religious speech or expression is unconstitutional because “that’s not what the First Amendment gave me.”

“It gave me more protection because I get my speech but if it’s religious, I get it twice, and if it is religious with others, I get it three times,” Barton claimed. “In addition to free speech, there is also free exercise of religion, which often involves free speech. For me to exercise my faith means I will speak about it, I will live it out, I will activate it, I will do it. And, by the way, I have the right to assembly, so I can get together with other believers and we can act out our faith … While religious folks have at least three different forms of protection under the First Amendment for their speech, secular folks have their protections as well for speech and assembly, but they just don’t have the same religious motivations.”

When Barton’s son, Tim, tried to clarify that all citizens “have the exact same protections that a religious person does,” Barton disputed that assessment.

Those who are familiar with Barton and his ravings will know that Barton is only speaking of his specific version of Christianity when he is talking about "religion."
 
These interpretations are the express reason we see arguments based on someone's rights being more important than someone else's rights, said another way this is why we see rights weaponized to the point that someone else is marginalized.
 
David Barton, well-known Liar for Jesus and pseudo-historian, apparently believes his speech and that of others who have the same religious beliefs as his is more protected than ordinary, non-religious speech.



Those who are familiar with Barton and his ravings will know that Barton is only speaking of his specific version of Christianity when he is talking about "religion."

:lol: This guy is a total ****ing idiot... how do you get more protection than 100% protection.

""" Geee... you have 100% protection because you have freedom of speech but I have 200% because I have freedom of speech AND freedom of religion... so Check-Mate Bitch... I win because I have Speech AND Religion!! """

what an uneducated douche bag... :lol:
 
These interpretations are the express reason we see arguments based on someone's rights being more important than someone else's rights, said another way this is why we see rights weaponized to the point that someone else is marginalized.

Yep, try to get a personal appointment to discuss X with your congress critter - then try again but enclose a $10K campaign contribution. ;)
 
David Barton, well-known Liar for Jesus and pseudo-historian, apparently believes his speech and that of others who have the same religious beliefs as his is more protected than ordinary, non-religious speech.



Those who are familiar with Barton and his ravings will know that Barton is only speaking of his specific version of Christianity when he is talking about "religion."

Note that in all of this you never actually make an argument for why Barton is wrong. Not only that your source never makes an argument for why he’s wrong, nor do they ever articulate a valid criticism of Barton. Clearly this source you cited is just ravings of hateful atheists

It’s like leftists don’t live in reality, oh wait you people literally believe men can become women, you don’t live in reality
 
Note that in all of this you never actually make an argument for why Barton is wrong. Not only that your source never makes an argument for why he’s wrong, nor do they ever articulate a valid criticism of Barton. Clearly this source you cited is just ravings of hateful atheists

It’s like leftists don’t live in reality, oh wait you people literally believe men can become women, you don’t live in reality

If secular speech is protected, and it is, then it's protected. How does adding another level onto "protected" make religious speech more protected? What can he do with this three levels of protection of speech that someone speaking about secular matters cannot? Please be specific if you want to defend this dumb idea.
 
If secular speech is protected, and it is, then it's protected. How does adding another level onto "protected" make religious speech more protected? What can he do with this three levels of protection of speech that someone speaking about secular matters cannot? Please be specific if you want to defend this dumb idea.

Because religion also entails practice and a practical need to meet religious obligations. It's not enough to be allowed to say homosexual "marriage" Is not marriage, if one is compelled by government violence to be a homosexual's slave like the liberals argue Jack Phillips should be. It's not enough to merely have a seal of confession, the state cannot compel ministers to divulge a sacramental confession, as California tried to do.

It's not enough merely to say men and women are different when the radicals are now saying three year olds should be shot up with hormones to change their gender, and just wait you will see leftists trying to seize children to make them trans in the next ten years.
 
Because religion also entails practice and a practical need to meet religious obligations. It's not enough to be allowed to say homosexual "marriage" Is not marriage, if one is compelled by government violence to be a homosexual's slave like the liberals argue Jack Phillips should be. It's not enough to merely have a seal of confession, the state cannot compel ministers to divulge a sacramental confession, as California tried to do.

It's not enough merely to say men and women are different when the radicals are now saying three year olds should be shot up with hormones to change their gender, and just wait you will see leftists trying to seize children to make them trans in the next ten years.

WOW! The rational might begin to wonder where they too can find the 'knowledge' that allows the Very Conservative to make such proclamations - but then again they might not.
 
WOW! The rational might begin to wonder where they too can find the 'knowledge' that allows the Very Conservative to make such proclamations - but then again they might not.

Books. I would recommend

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Sir Edmund Burke

The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk

The Holy Bible (KJV) (Note, I'm not saying the KJV is the only valid version, as a Catholic I don't use it for study, however one should read it because it will allow you to read prose better

These will get you started, you should also learn some basic philosophy, Plato and Aristotle in particular, Saint Thomas Aquinas is another, also read James Madison's notes on the Constitutional convention plus federalist and anti-federalist letters.

You're welcome.
 
Because religion also entails practice and a practical need to meet religious obligations. It's not enough to be allowed to say homosexual "marriage" Is not marriage, if one is compelled by government violence to be a homosexual's slave like the liberals argue Jack Phillips should be. It's not enough to merely have a seal of confession, the state cannot compel ministers to divulge a sacramental confession, as California tried to do.

It's not enough merely to say men and women are different when the radicals are now saying three year olds should be shot up with hormones to change their gender, and just wait you will see leftists trying to seize children to make them trans in the next ten years.

LOL - "homosexual's slave." I suppose restaurants who have to serve blacks are slaves too. But the point is a business open to the public can be forced to serve both and be slaves.

So you didn't answer the question and decided for some reason to bring up your weird obsession with trans issues. Sounds like it will be scary in 10 years. Will the leftists be seizing children before or after the Global Jewish Cabal wipe out 2/3 of the population with chem trails and vaccines?
 
LOL - "homosexual's slave." I suppose restaurants who have to serve blacks are slaves too. But the point is a business open to the public can be forced to serve both and be slaves.

So you didn't answer the question and decided for some reason to bring up your weird obsession with trans issues. Sounds like it will be scary in 10 years. Will the leftists be seizing children before or after the Global Jewish Cabal wipe out 2/3 of the population with chem trails and vaccines?

Well I mean thanks to Ilhan Omar I think the Jewish Cabal will be exposed before then.

There's no realistic movement to poison people with vaccines and chemtrails aren't physically viable methods of poisoning people, on the other hand there is an active movement who's willing to say young children can in fact be "trans". You're being stupid, when people are out there openly saying children can choose to change sex and there's doctors and counselors being told to be encourage this, your pathetic deflections to imaginary things like Jewish cabals and chemtrails are not a valid argument.
 
David Barton, well-known Liar for Jesus and pseudo-historian, apparently believes his speech and that of others who have the same religious beliefs as his is more protected than ordinary, non-religious speech.



Those who are familiar with Barton and his ravings will know that Barton is only speaking of his specific version of Christianity when he is talking about "religion."

This is just more mindless conservative claptrap to pander to white evangelicals who believe his idiocy that America was created as a Christian country. The government must show the very same deference to all religious beliefs and those who do not have any religious belief for the 1st Amdnemnt's religious free exercise clause to be constitutional. His religious speech can be no more protected than political speech or free speech rights are not equal.
 
David Barton, well-known Liar for Jesus and pseudo-historian, apparently believes his speech and that of others who have the same religious beliefs as his is more protected than ordinary, non-religious speech.



Those who are familiar with Barton and his ravings will know that Barton is only speaking of his specific version of Christianity when he is talking about "religion."

No, obviously it isn't, but I can see why he would make the argument. He's saying it is more protected because he refuses to acknowledge that the inclusion of the right to practice religion is simply part of the list of forms of speech that is protected, instead is insisting that it is its own category outside of the general category and has its own classification of speech.
 
Well I mean thanks to Ilhan Omar I think the Jewish Cabal will be exposed before then.

There's no realistic movement to poison people with vaccines and chemtrails aren't physically viable methods of poisoning people, on the other hand there is an active movement who's willing to say young children can in fact be "trans". You're being stupid, when people are out there openly saying children can choose to change sex and there's doctors and counselors being told to be encourage this, your pathetic deflections to imaginary things like Jewish cabals and chemtrails are not a valid argument.

And as usual, people like you miss the point; it isn't a choice. Just like being gay isn't a choice. Sure, there may be people out there who are willing to give it a try just to see, but the overwhelming majority claim those identities simply because that is who they are. But for people like you, you think that it's all about sexual perversion...because you can't seem to get your mind out of the gutter.

Ok, let me throw this out there...hermaphrodites, or the more modern term, intersex. We have scientifically proven such people exist. How would you account for that? For nature to do that? How do they become one sex and not the other if they are biologically both? And before you respond, please read up a little on the subject; there are classifications of people who are intersex.
 
And as usual, people like you miss the point; it isn't a choice. Just like being gay isn't a choice. Sure, there may be people out there who are willing to give it a try just to see, but the overwhelming majority claim those identities simply because that is who they are. But for people like you, you think that it's all about sexual perversion...because you can't seem to get your mind out of the gutter.

Ok, let me throw this out there...hermaphrodites, or the more modern term, intersex. We have scientifically proven such people exist. How would you account for that? For nature to do that? How do they become one sex and not the other if they are biologically both? And before you respond, please read up a little on the subject; there are classifications of people who are intersex.

Correct, your sex is not a choice. So no matter how much you feel like a woman, if you’re XY with functioning male anatomy then you’re a man and any belief to the contrary is delusion.

We’re not going there. Using “intersex” to justify the transgender agenda is ridiculous. You make that dumb argument just to justify your position sex doesn’t exist. I’m not willing to reorder all of society around the idea that an extremely small number of true intersex people (who nearly all in fact do have a sex of male or female) exist. The fact that intersex people exist does not mean that gyms should have to let people like Jessica Yaniv (btw you want to talk about perverts, look that man, because he is a man up)
In to their changing rooms or force women to wax his scrotum
 
David Barton, well-known Liar for Jesus and pseudo-historian, apparently believes his speech and that of others who have the same religious beliefs as his is more protected than ordinary, non-religious speech.

Those who are familiar with Barton and his ravings will know that Barton is only speaking of his specific version of Christianity when he is talking about "religion."

He is not wrong in that there are two provisions within the First Amendment that protect religious speech specifically. However, that does not make religious speech more protected. The level of protection the First Amendment affords doesn't stack, it is the same level of protection regardless whether it is one inherent right being violated or half a dozen individual rights being violated across multiple Bill of Rights.
 
Note that in all of this you never actually make an argument for why Barton is wrong. Not only that your source never makes an argument for why he’s wrong, nor do they ever articulate a valid criticism of Barton. Clearly this source you cited is just ravings of hateful atheists

It’s like leftists don’t live in reality, oh wait you people literally believe men can become women, you don’t live in reality

I am Catholic and conservative, but the view that religious speech has more protection than other speech is hogwash. All speech is protected, except that speech which is designed to incite violence. Speech encompasses thought, expression, and action.
 
I am Catholic and conservative, but the view that religious speech has more protection than other speech is hogwash. All speech is protected, except that speech which is designed to incite violence. Speech encompasses thought, expression, and action.

Speech can also include money, as in contributions to candidates, political action committees, and special interest groups. Every individual right listed by the US Constitution is equally protected, none greater or lesser than any other. Those individual rights are only restricted when it comes to harming others.

Abner Kneeland has the infamous distinction of being the last man jailed in the US for blasphemy in 1838. Since then we've recognized that slander/libel against a religion is not the same thing as slander/libel against an individual. No one is actually harmed (except maybe psychologically) when religion is slandered/libeled.
 
Speech can also include money, as in contributions to candidates, political action committees, and special interest groups. Every individual right listed by the US Constitution is equally protected, none greater or lesser than any other. Those individual rights are only restricted when it comes to harming others.

Abner Kneeland has the infamous distinction of being the last man jailed in the US for blasphemy in 1838. Since then we've recognized that slander/libel against a religion is not the same thing as slander/libel against an individual. No one is actually harmed (except maybe psychologically) when religion is slandered/libeled.

Is a church or religious group which receives tax exemptions from the IRS allowed to provide funding to political candidates? If they are not allowed to spend their money in the political world, is their free speech being impeded?
 
Is a church or religious group which receives tax exemptions from the IRS allowed to provide funding to political candidates? If they are not allowed to spend their money in the political world, is their free speech being impeded?

No. That was what killed the Moral Majority of the 1980s and the Christian Coalition of the 1990s. They used tax exempt funds for political purposes and that caused them to have their tax exemption revoked by the IRS. That doesn't mean that religions cannot use money for political speech. They just cannot claim a religious tax exemption when they do use money for political purposes.
 
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Speech can also include money, as in contributions to candidates, political action committees, and special interest groups. Every individual right listed by the US Constitution is equally protected, none greater or lesser than any other. Those individual rights are only restricted when it comes to harming others.

Abner Kneeland has the infamous distinction of being the last man jailed in the US for blasphemy in 1838. Since then we've recognized that slander/libel against a religion is not the same thing as slander/libel against an individual. No one is actually harmed (except maybe psychologically) when religion is slandered/libeled.

I couldn’t agree more. Donations to a political candidate are nothing other than acting out or expressing your beliefs, which is the basis of the free speech clause.

I think the run of the post is whether there ought to be a distinction between individual and corporate speech. Whether corporate speech is less important than individual speech. That’s a more interesting question.
 
I couldn’t agree more. Donations to a political candidate are nothing other than acting out or expressing your beliefs, which is the basis of the free speech clause.

I think the run of the post is whether there ought to be a distinction between individual and corporate speech. Whether corporate speech is less important than individual speech. That’s a more interesting question.

There is no such thing as "corporate" speech. All speech is individual speech. That is why it is called an "individual right." Corporations are merely legal constructs to protect a company from liability. The individuals that form the corporation are allowed to say whatever they please, but there is no such thing as "corporate" speech. A CEO can speak on behalf of his company, but it is still his individual speech, not his company's speech. Legal constructs have no voice.

The closest you can get to "corporate" speech is when members of a corporation contribute to a particular cause, and that political money is then spent on behalf of the corporation. However, that really isn't "corporate" speech, it is merely the corporation acting as a facilitator to individuals expressing their free speech.
 
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My SWAT team of researchers said its okay for me to buy into the swim lane core competency of corporate speech to empower tiger teams of individuals to move the needle and open the kimono on bleeding edge ideas even though they might burn platforms by drinking the Kool Aid. The distinction between corporate speech and individual speech has lots of moving parts. We'd better make hay on this while it's still scalable and think outside the Constitutional box to affirm the best practice that will get the ducks in a row for the entire ecosystem of government and private sector solutions to leverage vertical and over the wall full-service drill downs. It is what it is -- a robust concept we've got to take offline in order to synergize any learnings before we boil the ocean by reaching out before the hard stop. Maybe we should punt the idea of corporate speech and the impact it might have on giving 110% to the body of work. Yeah. Let's talk that. There is no price point on freedom so let's take it to the next level and discover the matter is cut and dry. Before any of us goes out of pocket and we lose the window of opportunity to peel the onion on this low hanging fruit by stating corporate speech should not exist.*

*Annoying business jargon courtesy of Forbes.
 
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