- Joined
- Jul 10, 2017
I think the other thing that people often miss is that the first amendment applies to the government. It simply means that they cannot censor you or arrest you for your speech along with the other rights described in the amendment.
However it doesn't grant you a podium, require anyone else to yield you theirs, or even extend to private individuals or organizations. You're free to yell all you want about god being a lie in the public square, but do so in a church and you can be asked to leave. If you don't, you'll be arrested for trespassing, but not blasphemy or the content of your speech.
About the only examples I can think of offhand where speech becomes a criminal matter (defamation is a civil offense) are highly specific examples of incitement to violence (to the point where it appears a person is giving clear orders and becomes an accessory to any crime committed) or filing a false police report, which is only a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions and often difficult to prove because the state needs to prove that you knowingly and intentionally made false statements and merely weren't misremembering a situation.
I suppose child pornography and revenge porn laws fall into that category as well. Strong free speech advocates should probably argue that both of those should be okay (but you can get into other interesting arguments along copyright or unlawful use of name or likeness to skirt around the issue) but most people hate pedophiles so much that it doesn't bother them if they're being a little hypocritical in that case.
Incitement to violence, direct threat to violence, conspiracy to commit a crime, can all fall in there. Also with some modern interpretations of “action or location = speech” such as for protests you get some fun ancillary ones such as “Interference with emergency operations” a personal favorite of mine. Or the cops favorite standby “making a public ass of yourself to the degree that the cop has to deal with it.”