The Right to Peacefully Assemble

The Right to Peacefully Assemble

I read an AP article on the Foxnews website, “Moscow Mayor Calls Gay Rights Parade 'Satanic'”. The gay rights activists have demanded the opportunity to hold a parade and the mayor has staunchly denied permission ( link provided in title bar )

In America we have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; I know, just a piece of paper to some folks, that provide a means of recognizing specific individual rights. One day it might be nice if we all took a few moments to read those documents. I can’t fathom why any individual or group of individuals who live a life style that I can only call a “deviant expression”, deviant as pertaining to those actions declared so by our Father in Heaven, why these folks would want the spot light turned on them as they wallow in their filth.

That having been said, our First Amendment clearly defines the rights of such deviants to express themselves in group protestation against the very society from which they have strayed; provided that the celebration or grievance is done in a peaceable manner. What constitutes “peaceable manner”; does that mean threat of violence either by those involved in the march or does it imply that those who deplore the deviant life style might not be able to contain their loathing and become violent against the marchers?

I have no idea what kind of individual rights are set down in law over in Russia; don’t really give a hoot either, I live in America. All things being equal, or if Moscow were here in America I’d have to side against the mayor and proceed on the assumption that all marches are peaceful assemblies on face value; to imply otherwise chips away at the foundation of our most basic belief that all are innocent until proven otherwise. It is lawful to be a homosexual, even if such deviant behavior is an abomination before God; the consequences are of an eternal nature and should be left to God when judgment is exacted. By extension it is lawful for a group of homosexuals to gather in groups, to march and to glorify their deviant life style in the face of those who have chosen a more conservative path, one which they believe to be in accordance with the will of God.

I would require safe conduct be provided by law enforcement; both to protect those involved in the march and to enforce laws which outline proper conduct in public. I have observed many marches in my twenty years as a police officer, many times while I was assigned in exactly that capacity, to provide a safe environment when hostilities run high.

I have had the opportunity, a modest alteration of how I might have expressed such an assignment earlier in my life, to provide police protection for all manner of unpleasant marches; KKK, Iranian protests and even against Dung Chiow Ping (spelling optional, lol). We had a special squad of officers to provide pre-march security measures; removal of strategically placed weapons along the parade route such as sacks of rocks stored in newspaper sales boxes, clubs that had the appearance of being picket signs and such.

On only one march did we as a specialized group of police officers have to (get to) storm the “minority” marchers and remove several of them when it was determined that they were holding “clubs” rather than banners on sticks. I’m not sure what the difference is between a tomato stake pole with a flag and a club with a flag; but the march had turned particularly ugly and it might have been the best way to put a lid on it and that was a command decision made higher up the chain. It gave us a chance to use the riot tactics we had practiced for years; not to mention a chance to remove some human slime from the side walks of Houston, even if it was just for a little while it felt good.

We need to remember that the rights that we claim for ourselves are evenly distributed with the rest of those we share this country with; the rain falls on the just and the unjust. While I cannot accept the deviant life styles put on display by the “gay rights” individuals or groups, they should not be denied freedom of expression as long as such expression does not cross over the fine line between civil and one that is patently offensive with the intention of causing harm.

I have written in the past, mostly in the form of comments to articles I have read by others, on how ironic it must seem that the use of God given rights can be heralded by those intent on defiance of those restrictions placed on mortals by that very same God. It is not logical that the Creator of Heaven and Earth, that God who provided the inspiration to pen such magnificent documents as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would have given those individual freedoms and rights, the necessary “agency of man” intended to permit his/her return to His presence once mortality had finished, to be perverted in meaning as to include such bizarre expressions as homosexual “rights”, abortion or as it has been called by the politically correct, “women’s right of choice”, pornographic displays in the name of “free speech” and so on down the line of depravity.