LA Times:
On Monday, two members of Hemet church appeared in court for their February 2011 arrests for reading the Bible outside a DMV office. Brett Anthony Coronado, 42, of Reconciled Christian Fellowship and Mark Allen Mackey, 59, of Calvary Chapel Hemet, came to the DMV before business hours and began reading aloud from the Bible. When a security guard confronted Mackey and told him to leave, the men said they weren’t interfering with DMV business and that they were protected by the First Amendment. They were then arrested by California High Officer Darrin Meyer, who cited them for “impeding an open business.”
“We believe that these men were exercising their First Amendment right of Free Speech,” said their attorney, Robert Tyler with Advocates for Faith & Freedom. “These men were simply sharing their faith on public property, and we will defend their constitutional right to do so.”
This is too good to pass up.
Suppose they had been leaders of the local Muslim community, and had been reading the Koran.
Would they be facing criminal charges and jail time?
I don’t think so.
Can’t government officials even bother to read the First Amendment? Religious speech is clearly also protected speech:
They were in public, on public property outside the DMV speaking quotes from the bible and thereby exercising their right to free speech. Public property outside the DMV is no different under the law than a town square. Had they been reading from the communist manifesto or Democratic party platform, the left would be in full support of them.
@mathman: #1
You took SOME of the words out of my mouth. What if they read the Bible in Spanish or Arabic?
In college one of the students in a law class did an oral report on Supreme Court cases where preachers had won the right to preach on sidewalks, on your paved driveway, on your porch and they were even found to have the right to walk past ”No Trespassing” signs to reach and ring your doorbell!
So, if these men were really on ”public property,” they were well within their rights.
None of those cases was newer than the 1950’s and none has been overturned.