As you probably know, a group of Muslims have indicated their interest in building a mosque a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Understandably, folks are up in arms, screaming that it would be an insult to the memory of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2011. I totally understand their reaction. I can’t imagine what it must be like to wake up every day only to think about the loved one who was killed on that day. But there is a bigger picture that opponents of the mosque are missing.
This country was founded on several basic freedoms, including the right to practice one’s religion. And I would argue that that freedom extends to the desire to construct a site where your followers can congregate. This debate over the mosque reminds me of the debate over the right of anti-abortion protestors to express their views on the abortion issue. And, the pro-choicers may not like it, but I would generally defend the right of protestors to exercise their freedom of speech, including participating in some rather ugly activity.
Now, before you bust a gut, let me acknowledge that there is a limit to free speech and the fact is that most cities have laws that restrict certain activity. So, for example, most cities have noise ordinances that would restrict the use of bullhorns outside of an abortion clinic. Most cities have stalking laws that prohibit protestors from following someone and putting that person “in fear of bodily harm.” Some cities have enacted laws creating “bubble zones” around an abortion clinic that protestors cannot enter. Meanwhile, however, many people allege that the protestors are “harassing” abortion clinic staff and patients, but “harassment” is much harder to prove. Generally, when the police get a call from a person claiming they were being “harassed,” the police will go to the site and try to resolve the problem without making any arrests. Finally, on the federal level there is the FACE law (“Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances”) which basically guarantees the right of a woman to walk into a clinic unimpeded.
So, there are a crap load of laws out there that can be enforced. And, as always, the police use them at their discretion.
But, back to the bigger picture.
I support the right of an anti-abortion protestor to stand in front of a clinic, as long as they are not trespassing. I support their right to hold up those very ugly aborted fetus signs. I support their right to scream at the top of their lungs as long as they don’t violate the noise ordinances. I support their right to call the patient and/or the clinic staff “murderers.” Indeed, in the mid-1990’s, when the Congress was considering the FACE law referenced above, I worked with the pro-choice Members of Congress and insisted that we insert language in the bill that reaffirmed the protestor’s right to free speech.
I don’t like the fact that the anti-abortion protestors are out there in front of the clinics. I think it is mean spirited, not very Christian like. I think all they do is upset the women who are already in a somewhat emotional state. And the workers in the abortion clinic are understandably sensitive to the anti-abortion activity that is taking place in front of their very eyes.
But in this country, we need to think long term. As in the case of the mosque, we need to remember that the Constitution guarantees some very basic and important freedoms that should not be restricted to accommodate some short term political agenda.
August 16, 2010 at 4:14 am
Can’t argue with this one.
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February 12, 2014 at 3:02 am
It’s a plaeruse to find someone who can think so clearly
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August 16, 2010 at 6:26 am
We are all in agreement.
A first?
Thank you Pat for clarifying your free speech position a little more clearly.
I think that was important. What is
Rather ugly activity
At end of second paragraph extend to?
The vast majority of Muslims that I have met have been good, decent people, who just want to live their lives, raise there children and share many of the same values.
The one’s out of the Mosque in NY hopefully will be Americans first and denounce crimes against this country.
It would be the best gesture of GoodWill and solidarity.
The anti semetisim od most Muslims I know is offensive.
I grant them their space, as I do my crazy evangelical fiends, as they were so indoctrinated as children it will be hard to escape.
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August 16, 2010 at 7:34 am
Bailey, by “rather ugly activity” I was referring to the screaming at women (“Mommy, Dont Kill Me! You’re a Murderer, etc”)
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August 16, 2010 at 9:54 am
“Mommy, don’t kill me!” is not ugly, Pat. I get even more graphic, “Mommy, don’t let him pull off my arms and legs!” They can’t talk yet, so that’s the least I can do.
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August 19, 2010 at 8:26 pm
so why do the least?
why not go a step further and offer a long term solution?
I have perused this blog, and as a pro-lifer, i have to agree with the choicers that your motivation seems far more to be to give glory to dunkle than to give glory to god.
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August 20, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Getting attention here or in front of a clinic is what keeps John Dunkle alive, Rogelio…
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February 8, 2014 at 11:50 pm
You’re on top of the game. Thanks for shgianr.
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August 16, 2010 at 11:45 am
What about screaming in their ear?
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August 17, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Think about how many times you have screamed at someone “in their ear,” including your spouse. Do you want that to be against the law? However, if someone is doing that and the person is in fear of bodily harm, that technically is an “assault.”
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August 18, 2010 at 7:23 am
Not my spouse, Pat. She’d deck me. I’m concerned about that “assault” stuff.
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August 16, 2010 at 10:20 am
I know what you are saying Pat is right…and I agree with you…I guess I am just touchier when it comes to the people outside of the clinic’s ….. I can only hope that the people that attend the mosque will be good citizens….and try hard to work with the families that lost loved ones on 9/11 to show their hearts are in the right place!!!
Dunkle….give us all a break…please!!! Although I know that you won’t….
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August 16, 2010 at 11:51 am
Lorraine, however well intentioned,
Talking to a DunkleGanger,
Only creates more CO2,
Why do that and contribute to global warming?
He wastes our Oxygen.
He is a waste of the precious essense of life or humanity.
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August 19, 2010 at 8:27 pm
you have reason to be touchier, lorriepoo.
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August 17, 2010 at 9:04 am
Wow, John Dunkle a reasonable man? Who would’ve thought?
I’m impressed.
Well, this is a free country and people should be able to exercise their rights no matter what. If it is legal no one should protest or try to keep someone from doing anything. Like I said before, this is a free country but it should not be free to the point where one thinks he can impose their opinions on another by harassing and mentally harming them.
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August 19, 2010 at 8:36 pm
pattypoo,
you make perfect sense, and of course erecting a masjid close to ground zero is simply following one’s right to freedom of religion.
people have fought and died for that right.\
those who are so adamant against it bring to mind nazi germany with placing the blame of the world’s problems on judiasm.
saturday mornings often find me in front of abortion clinics, in peaceful prayer. i don’t go there to protest, but rather to pray.
but i would never scream nasty things to the women who go there, and going to the home of an abortionist or a staffer would be totally out of the question.
that is their home.
even if zoning laws would state that i would have that legal right, that would not make it the right thing for me to do.
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August 20, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Rogelio, you mentioned you sometimes pray in front of clinics. If you care about women, why go out there at all? Don’t you realize that the women walking into the clinic see you out there and, although you are quiet, it still upsets them? Why can’t you just pray at home for the unborn? Or are you looking for attention? Be honest…
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August 20, 2010 at 2:14 pm
See, Rog, what happens when you’re a wimp? Kayhaitchers will not be satisfied until even private prayer at home is outlawed. This is a war between life and death and the only people who have the knowledge and courage to act as if it is are either dead or in jail.
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August 21, 2010 at 1:16 pm
We will not be satisfied until we outlaw private prayer? Now, John, that cannot be a serious statement.
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August 26, 2010 at 11:10 am
Sure, I’m serious. Haven’t you ever heard of places where kids spy on parents? And they’re not half as corrupt as the place we’re living in.
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August 26, 2010 at 11:43 pm
i have seen your website and it appears to me that not only do you praise people who are part of the culture of death, but you also praise their acts.
i don’t see how they have either knowledge or courage.
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August 27, 2010 at 5:11 am
Rog, you extending the culture of death from those who every year torture to death a million and a half innocent young people to include someone who, once every five years, kills a killer quickly?
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August 27, 2010 at 7:10 pm
yes, i am.
but then i also made the choice to be part of the culture of death in 1984.
given that i believe that human life is sacred and a gift from god, i don’t think it is prudent to dismiss it for one person on the basis of numbers of deaths.
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August 25, 2010 at 9:36 pm
i pray and hold my sign stating “i regret lost fatherhood”
i am often approached by women and by men ( after they send the men away ( that is what they do here after stripping the women nude except for a hospital gown ) and take away their cel phones.
i tell of what i did on october 9, 1984.
nobody ever told me that i would think about that baby every day of my life.
nobody told me that one day many years later, i would think about the grandchildren that i will never cuddle and play with.
we were not given complete disclosure.
sometimes when they leave, it is obvious that they are upset.
i have seen women try and drive away in that state, and i urge them not to try and drive, and to pull over next door into the parking lot of the cpc ( we always have one next to the abortion clinics, you know.
i am not there to judge. i am the last person that has any business doing that.
what some lifers don’t understand is that the decision to abort did not come without great consequence to many of us.
sometimes people never ever regret their decision, and i truly am grateful for that.
the emotional and spiritual wounds that come from it are very deep, and that’s not something that i would ever want for anybody.
i just want them to know that sometimes, we make decisions that we regret, and that’s not a decision that can be changed or fixed after the fact.
but do i want attention?
no.
sometimes, when people talk to me and change their mind, and i am able to offer them other resources, other lifers have come and declared that i saved a baby’s life.
i inform them that dios altisimo chose to allow that baby to live.
then invariably, i will get a smug chuckle and “well, he did allow the baby to live, but he used you to do it.”
i then simply inform them that they are wrong and that it is only by god’s grace that the baby will be born, and at that point i have to walk away to stifle the growing urge to smack the crap out of them for their arrogance.
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August 26, 2010 at 10:59 am
Thanks for sharing…what do you mean that on that day in 1984, “they didn’t disclose” things to you? I am assuming that is when your wife/girfriend had the abortion. What were you not told?
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August 27, 2010 at 12:12 am
this was not at a clinic, it was at her gyn’s office, and i was allowed in the room as it occurred.
we were not told that either of us stood a chance of dealing with the inner turmoil that we did. this remorse did not come from religious sources, as neither of us were religious at that point. as a matter of fact, i was raised agnostic.
we were not told that she would face 5 miscarriages due to the abortion before she was able to carry another baby to term.
we were also actually lied to about the development of the baby at that stage of gestation.
although tiny, at 10 weeks the baby is beyond an unrecognizable blob of cells.
i understand that not everybody has the experience that we did. and as i said, that is not something i would want for anyone.
but when clinics deny that such things happen, or dismiss them in a cavalier manner, they are not giving complete disclosure to the patients.
those are the choicers that i spoke of who only see abortion as a political issue and don’t give a damn about the mother or the baby’s best interests.
then there are clinics like lorriepoo’s who has therapists who work pro-bono to offer post-abortive healing.
dr tiller’s clinic offered a chaplain to help people deal with the spiritual wounds.
while i think abortion is always wrong, at least these clinics acknowledge that there are times when the abortion is not the easy out that the choicers who see only the political side of it claim it to be.
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August 27, 2010 at 5:14 am
Wow, Rog, I accept you as an ally even without your permission. Peter Knight wouldn’t, though.
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August 27, 2010 at 7:15 pm
>>>Wow, Rog, I accept you as an ally even without your permission. Peter Knight wouldn’t, though.<<<
you say that as though it was a BAD thing.
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August 27, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Peter Knight accepts nobody unless he is either dead or in jail. I consider his attitude moot.
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August 27, 2010 at 11:39 pm
what would you say are the differences between his attitude and the attitudes of the other people whose acts of violence you have listed on your site that you consider praiseworthy?
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August 28, 2010 at 4:45 am
An “act of violence,” Rog, is a term that describes what happens to a young person when she is carried into a place where where someone will slowly kill her. By applying it to those who try to help her, you are falling into the killers’ trap.
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August 28, 2010 at 11:59 am
“vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord”
the people whose acts you praise are the ones that have fallen into satan’s trap, john.
as long as people like dr tiller were alive, and there were others praying for him, there was a chance that he would convert.
i discovered a year ago, that the doctor that aborted my child converted.
have you no idea what glory that gave to god???
when dr tiller was murdered, i had been praying intensely for him for quite a while.
i studied a lot about him, and i saw that his motivation was that he wanted to help people who were facing a devastating situation.
as misguided as his acts might have been, i know that his motivation was to try and help those people.
his last act on earth was to welcome people to come worship dios altisimo.
so the seeds of love were definitely within him.
but what tyou and roeder don’t understand is that when roeder killed him, he was not questioning dr tiller’s capability of converting.
he was questioning our blessed virgin mother’s ability to intervene on his behalf.
he was questioning the ability of the blood of jesucristo to wash his sins away.
the seeds of love that had been planted within dr tiller will never bear the fruit that they could have bore.
that will never happen now because of the actions of roeder.
i am not the one who applies the term violence onto roeder. he did that himself with his own actions.
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August 28, 2010 at 12:01 pm
and you were sidetracked and didn’t answer the question.
what would you say is the difference between knight’s attitude and the attitudes of the other people whose acts you praise.
why is knight different from them?
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August 28, 2010 at 2:43 pm
No difference so far as I can see.
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February 8, 2014 at 11:18 pm
More posts of this qulyita. Not the usual c***, please
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May 5, 2014 at 4:12 am
That’s a crackerjack answer to an interesting question
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August 28, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Vengeance is of course the Lord’s and no one should kill for revenge. But what Kopp and others did was save lives by permanently removing their killers. Tiller had been feeding tidbits to prolifers for years; meanwhile he was killing, and he would have kept killing, thousands of innocents annually. I’m assuming that when you were praying for Tiller, you were praying that he would stop killing people. And the Lord answered your prayers, through Scott.
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August 31, 2010 at 7:31 pm
john, when i pray for doctors that perform abortions, i pray for their conversion, that it will give glory to god. an end to the killing is a secondary effect of that.
conversion requires a person to offer up the free will that god gave them, in favor of god’s will.
so, no, god did not answer my prayers for dr tiller using roeder.
repentance in and of itself is a beautiful thing because it gives glory to god.
roeder’s act gave him no glory.
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September 1, 2010 at 8:17 am
Are you reading this stuff, John? Is Rogie making any sense to you? Rogie sounds like a real Christian. What he is saying is something that Christ would say.
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September 1, 2010 at 5:07 pm
yes and no
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September 2, 2010 at 9:01 pm
john, i believe that dios altisimo wants redemption for all of us. that would include dr tiller just as much as it includes roeder, or you and i.
for this, he allowed jesucristo to die on the cross.
it is not his will that any should perish.
his ways are not our ways.
for him to strike someone down is different than if a mortal does. he is god, we are not.
roeder did what is for god alone to do.
isn’t that why pro-lifers are against abortion to begin with?
don’t you believe in the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception until the time of natural death?
dr tiller’s death was not natural.
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February 7, 2014 at 11:47 pm
estimada mariana: favor avaisr por tu pagina y twitter que en septiembre vendra nuevamente Rogelio( a mi me llego la informacion a mi mail) y me pude inscribir a su master class(pagando el valor que luego te devuelven en productos).solo un dato.que estes bien y felicitaciones nuevamente por tu pagina.saludos.
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September 3, 2010 at 4:26 am
I’m Catholic, Rog, and you’re a Quaker (pacifist). I think child-killing will again be outlawed through the actions of Jesus-inspired people, not through those of Jesus himself. He been there, done that.
And as for George, how do you know he needed redemption?
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September 3, 2010 at 9:10 am
actually, i am catholic, and what i follow are catholic teachings.
you are perverting catechism 2265, but 2266 and 2267 validate what i tell you.
outlawing abortion will never stop it from happening, john. it never did before. what will stop it is eliminating the circumstances that women seeking abortions are dealing with.
i believe that abortion is not the illness, it is a symptom.
how do i know that dr tiller needed redemption? because of the concupiscence that we all have.
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September 3, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Oh, oh, I think I got another cutie. OK, how do you know he is not redeemed? And stop sending me to your sources, like Charles loves to do. And Catholicism is not Pacifism. And your worst: “Outlawing abortion will never stop it from happening.” This great lie, originally promulgated by one of our worst killers’ helpers, Larry Tribe, implies that just a many kids were tortured to death before Roe as after. The truth is that now we kill thousands of times more than before. I mean, comon Rog, are laws against robbing banks ever going to stop that from happening? Are laws against wife-beating ever going to stop that from happening. Want to remove those laws too?
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September 4, 2010 at 4:42 am
i said that he was in need of redemption, as we are all because of his concupiscence, and that god wants that redemption for all of us.
not that he was or wasn’t.
i must depend of god’s mercy for that redemption.
what i offered you was not MY source.
it is catechism of the catholic church. it was designed to tell all catholics about scriptures and catholic teaching.
it disallows people from twisting scriptures to make their own morality that is contrary to catholic teaching.
if you behave contrary to catechism, you act outside of catholic teaching.
catechism came from rome, not hidalgo, so you can be pretty certain that rogelio didn’t write it.
i am quite aware that catholicism is not pacifism, just as it is not lunacy. i guess you didn’t get the memo.
i notice that you quoted one part of what i said regarding legality, rather than the entire quote, for the purpose of twisting what i said.
i told you once again how to eliminate abortions, and yet you disregard it once again because it would A. keep you from getting the attention that you crave, and B. require you to conduct yourself in a christlike manner.
no, i do not want laws regarding robbing banks ( a poor comparison ) or wife-beating to become legal anymore than i want abortion to be legal.
i don’t want any act that i consider immoral to be legal, as they lead people to equate that legality with morality. stalking is a good example. 🙂
however, HELLO REALITY!
abortion is legal, as is stalking, apparently.
it is what it is, john.
while you spend your time harassing people, you could have been using that valuable time and effort helping women who seek abortions because of the circumstances that they face.
but you prefer not to make efforts to make a difference to women, that they might choose life.
the attention that you seek is worth more than human life, apparently. you could be effective, or you can have your petty fame.
i wonder how many babies have died because you want attention too much to perform effective acts that will help women to carry their babies to term?
as i said before, john, abortion is not the illness. it is a symptom.
the illness is a society in which one focuses on themselves and turns their backs on those in need.
every action has a reaction, john.
turning our backs on those women in need is the action.
abortion is the reaction.
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September 4, 2010 at 12:29 pm
This is a great post, Rog. It’s unfortunate that the entire pro-life movement does not think the way you do. I really appreciate your well thought out comments…
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September 4, 2010 at 6:04 pm
“It’s unfortunate that the entire pro-life movement does not think the way you do.” Don’t feel too bad, Pat. Lots of people think the way Rog does. Most of them are pro-death.
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December 18, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Getting Rid Of Dark Eyes…
[…]Protecting the Rights of Anti-Abortion Protestors « Abortion – Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information[…]…
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