Perhaps one of the most complex, emotional and thorny issues confronting this nation today is our ability--or inability-- to successfully navigate the oftentimes murky waters of First Amendment rights. Some First Amendment advocates believe that the principle of free speech should be defended at all costs and preserved in an absolute form. Others, including myself, feel we must find intelligent and effective ways to prevent abuse and exploitation of the first amendment when it comes to verbal hate crimes and threats of violence.
We legally accept that verbal child abuse is often as damaging and as a heinous a crime as physical child abuse, but many of us draw the line when this very same behavior extends into adulthood, defending it with the First Amendment.
Sure, some of the lugs among us will call victims wimps and mock them for not having the backbone to just turn away and walk in the opposite direction when faced with a verbal bully and hate language. But they are lugs.
A Rhode Island judge, working with that state's newly formed civil rights advocate's office has ordered a woman to stop directing anti-gay slurs at her homosexual neighbor. The judge ruled that the insults amounted to "hateful conduct" and interfered with the man's right to live in peace.
The foul-mouthed woman's lawyer argued that his client's comments were protected by the First Amendment and were merely part of a "kindergarten name-calling contest."
The judge disagreed with the kindergarten defense, and ruled that the woman "has intimidated" the gay man and she has "threatened him with physical violence...all connected to his sexual orientation." The judge decided that the gay man's right to live peacefully without verbal attacks from a neighbor was a basic civil right that did indeed draw a line on freedom of speech.
Now this was a little decision in a little place in a little state but in my view it has some very interesting and potentially far reaching national implications.
Imagine if these same Rhode Island legal principles were applied to Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter and George W. Bush. Imagine if language and even actions that interfered with a man's right to leave in peace were determined by our higher courts to be a violation of a man's civil rights?