A First Amendment fiasco

I'D LIKE to put out an APB for the ACLU, ASAP. First Amendment rights are being violated, and the famous civil libertarians are AWOL.

Enough fun with acronyms, this is serious business. Recently, members of a group called Repent America had the bad taste to exercise their right to free speech (and, as they see it, freedom of religious expression) in the streets of Philadelphia, engaging in a protest at a gay pride event called OutFest in October.

With bullhorns and signs, they called upon the GBLT (sorry, another unavoidable acronym) community to renounce their sexual orientation and save their eternal souls. You can disagree with the message, and the indelicate manner in which it was communicated, but all honest civil libertarians have to admit that the protesters had a right to express their views.

But wait. In Philadelphia, cradle of liberty and birthplace of the freedoms we define as fundamental, the police and the DA's office have decided that offensive speech is felonious - not just un-P.C. (oops).

Standing in the middle of a public thoroughfare and telling people that they should stop having sex with each other now exposes you to felony charges. Thank goodness the priests of my youth were not preaching on public property, else they might have been forced to make license plates at Graterford.

Seriously, it is difficult to see how the DA's office can justify the charges it brought against the protesters who have been christened "The Philadelphia Four." While it is understandable that their message of intolerance, magnified by a bullhorn to apocalyptic dimensions, is offensive and hurtful to some, it is ridiculous to equate their activities with a hate crime.

A "hate crime," by definition, has to first be a crime. Marching in the streets and spouting unpopular, even racist and sexist propaganda, is not criminal, unless it poses a "clear and present danger" that someone will be physically hurt. The classic example involves shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But you'd be hard-pressed to prove that shouting "You must repent for your evil ways!" threatens to cause imminent bodily harm.

Psychic harm, surely. Ruffled nerves, no question. Physical injury? Not necessarily, and certainly not "clearly and presently."