We have been discussing the erosion of free speech rights across Europe, particularly within the European Union. The crackdowns on free speech in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France are often the focus of these columns. However, a recent case shows how smaller countries like Malta have joined this effort with a repressive vigor. Fortunately, the prosecution of Matthew Grech, 33, ended in acquittal this month, but not for a lack of effort by the government. The case should shock the conscience of anyone who values this “indispensable right.”
Grech faced up to five months in prison and a fine of 5,000 euros ($5,400) after he discussed his own history abandoning a homosexual lifestyle to become a born-again Christian. Not only did the government prosecute him for discussing his life, but it also charged journalists Mario Camilleri, 44, and Rita Bonnici, 45, for interviewing him.
It was a full frontal attack on both free speech and the free press. The prosecution was brought under Malta’s “Affirmation of Sexual Orientation, Gender and Gender Expression Act.” The law makes it a crime to perform or advertise practices aimed at changing or suppressing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Grech was the first to be prosecuted under the law after LGBTQ activists filed criminal complaints against him following his interview.
Silvan Agius and Christian Attard filed a report alleging that a related Facebook post and the subsequent interview advertised illegal conversion practices and promoted their “efficiency.”
Cynthia Chircop, a volunteer with the Malta LGBTIQ Rights Movement, filed a report with the Cyber Crime Unit that the video had “triggered emotions” of isolation she experienced as a teenager.
The government alleged that the interview constituted “marketing” for the International Foundation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice, an organization associated with Grech that advocates such transitioning away from homosexual lifestyles.
However, Magistrate Monica Vella ruled that sharing a personal account does not constitute marketing the procedures.
She sought to protect “free exploration and development.” However, the law itself was not struck down. The acquittal was secured on the basis that it was a personal account and not marketing.
The country still criminalizes programs that seek to help those who want to transition away from homosexual practices or lifestyles. In my view, such programs should be considered protected under free speech, religious, and associational rights.
Advocates in the United States have attempted analogous bans by other means. Roughly 23 states have laws banning conversion therapy for minors. The Supreme Court recently heard the case of Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge to Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors.
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If we look strictly at the text of the Constitution and the 1st and 14th Amendments, without any external judicial interpretations:
The 1st Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.”
The 14th Amendment states: “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The Supremacy Clause (Article VI) states: “This Constitution… shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
Taken literally and in isolation, if one considers defamation to be “speech” and the 14th Amendment’s “liberty” to include that speech, then any state law that punishes or restricts that speech would be a law that “abridges” it. Under the Supremacy Clause, if a state law (like a defamation statute) abridges a freedom guaranteed by the federal Constitution, that state law would be unconstitutional because the federal prohibition is supreme.
Under a strict textualist and natural law framework, your conclusion is consistent: the 1st Amendment’s “no law” and the 14th Amendment’s protection of “liberty” create an absolute shield that the government cannot penetrate.
If “the freedom of speech” is an inherent right and a lie carries no legitimate power to harm, then:
Article III judges are bound to the text, which contains no “defamation exception.”
Article V remains the only legal path to create such an exception; without a formal amendment, the text stands as written.
Article VI (the Supremacy Clause) dictates that this federal prohibition overrides any state’s attempt to provide a legal cause of action for defamation.
In this view, the only constitutionally valid “due process” a state court can provide in a defamation suit is to recognize the supreme federal prohibition and dismiss the claim immediately. Any other outcome would allow a judge to amend the scope of “liberty” by decree, bypassing the people and the states.
You are wrong, because all the text says is that the freedom of speech may not be abridged. It doesn’t say what that freedom consists of. It is absurd to imagine that it consists of an absolute freedom to say anything one likes. There have to be exceptions, kinds of speech that simply aren’t included in the freedom and never were. People in the 18th century never considered those kinds of speech to be included in the freedom, so when they banned Congress from making any law abridging the freedom that didn’t include laws against these things.
The best proof of this is copyright laws, which clearly do restrict speech, and yet the original constitution explicitly authorizes them and it would be absurd to imagine that the first amendment withdrew that authorization! Obviously the freedom was always understood not to include certain kinds of speech, including breach of copyright. Defamation is another exception that we know 18th century people did not consider to be included in the freedom of speech. We know this because the same people who ratified the 1st amendment passed and enforced defamation laws, and no one ever protested that this was a contradiction.
Biden says ‘I’m a h— of a lot smarter than most of you’ to crowd at Jesse Jackson’s funeral
BUT LIBERAL INSULTS OF THE RACIAL vein are ignored by our unbiased, free from fairness, for profit and clicks, press
notice woke was right on top of this hate-filled condemnation by holy joe
testyr
Testur
Testor
No law, by Congress or any state, shall be made that abridges the freedom of speech, and the freedom of speech is absolute.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Supremacy Clause ensures that the First Amendment is the supreme law, so no state law can lawfully abridge freedom of speech. Incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment simply reinforces that protection at the state level, making the First Amendment fully enforceable against states.
– Textually, the Supremacy Clause ensures the Constitution prevails over state law.
– Practically, selective incorporation ensures that federal rights are enforceable against states, giving real legal teeth to the Supremacy Clause.
In other words: Supremacy establishes the law, incorporation ensures it can actually be applied to state actions.
Yes, the US Constitution is the supreme law of the land. What does it say? It says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. That is the supreme law of the land. It doesn’t say “states shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.” That text is not found anywhere in the Constitution. Nevertheless, through interpretation of the 14th Amencment, the Supreme Court has ruled that states may make no law abridging freedom of speech. You like that ruling, so you rely on it. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the scope of that limitation does not not prohibit laws against certain types of speech, such as terroristic threats, fraud, disorderly conduct (in the form of fighting words), and defamation.* You don’t like that ruling, so you deny its validity. Bottom line: if you want to base your argument solely on the text, then you don’t have the incorporation doctrine, which is based on a Supreme Court interpretation saying that the words “due process” have a substantive component, not just a procedural component. But if you want to base your argument on, not only the text, but the Supreme Court’s interpretation of that text, then you have to accept the Supreme Court’s interpretation that the scope of 1A’s protection is not absolute. You have a problem with that, so you solve your problem by saying: “I refuse to choose; I will pick the interpretations I like, and reject the interpretations I dislike. I will claim that only the text matters when it suits me, but that judicial interpretations matter when they suit me.” You have the right to do that, but you don’t have the right to force me to say your argument is based on principles of law rather than your own subjective preferences. In fact, it is based on your own subjective preferences.
*In fact, with defamation, state laws don’t prohibit it. What state laws do is allow a private person who has suffered economic harm as a result of another private person’s lies to recover compensation for that economic harm.
– Textually, the Supremacy Clause ensures the Constitution prevails over state law.
– Practically, selective incorporation ensures that federal rights are enforceable against states, giving real legal teeth to the Supremacy Clause.
In other words: Supremacy establishes the law, incorporation ensures it can actually be applied to state actions.
You propose that the Framers intended for the freedom of speech et al. to be conferred to Americans by the Constitution and denied to them by the states.
You propose that the Framers intended for the freedom of speech et al. to be conferred to Americans by the Constitution and denied to them by the states.
Yes, there is no question whatsoever that that is exactly what they intended, and you will not find ANYONE who knows anything about the Bill of Rights who denies it. Until the 14th amendment was ratified, states were absolutely free to ban religions, establish religions, censor newspapers, ban guns, imprison people without due process, take property without compensation, and all the other things that the Bill of Rights prohibits Congress from doing. There is simply no dispute about this.
5th Amendment
No person shall be…deprived of…property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The fifth amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, applied only to the United States. The states were completely unbound by it, and were free to take people’s property, liberty, and lives without due process or compensation.
The fourteenth extended those rights to the states.
14th Due Process Clause
No State shall make…any law which shall…deprive any person of…liberty….
Liberty is freedom and freedom of speech, which includes defamation.
State defamation laws are unconstitutional.
No, the freedom of speech does NOT include defamation. It has NEVER included it. You are simply making that up, without any basis in 18th century concepts of freedom. You are wrong, and these laws are perfectly constitutional, just as they were in the 1790s.
In 1789 the Framers did not design the Constitution to confer fundamental freedoms and simultaneously permit states to negate them. The Constitution itself was established as the controlling authority through the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, which makes the Constitution the “supreme Law of the Land,” binding state judges notwithstanding contrary state law. At the founding, the United States Bill of Rights—including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution—was framed principally as a restraint on the new federal government because the immediate concern was federal overreach, while many states already protected speech in their own constitutions. But the constitutional structure did not contemplate a system in which fundamental liberties were recognized nationally yet freely extinguished by the states. That tension was later resolved explicitly after the American Civil War with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted to secure core liberties—including free speech—against state infringement.
In 1789 the Framers did not design the Constitution to confer fundamental freedoms and simultaneously permit states to negate them.
No, they didn’t design the constitution to protect these rights at all, even from Congress. They amended it to protect them from Congress, but absolutely NOT from the states. That was their explicit intent and they were very clear about it. In the republic’s early years states DID have established religions, they DID censor newspapers, they DID impose religious tests on holding office, and no one ever thought of going to federal court to stop them.
If one looks only at the text of the United States Constitution and the United States Bill of Rights, two provisions are relevant.
First, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” By its written terms, that clause restricts Congress, not the states. It does not itself confer a detailed regulatory code for speech nor does it expressly address state defamation law.
Second, the Supremacy Clause in Article VI provides that the Constitution and federal laws made pursuant to it are the supreme law of the land, binding state judges notwithstanding contrary state law.
Taken strictly together as written:
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from abridging freedom of speech.
The Supremacy Clause means that if a state law conflicts with a constitutional command, the Constitution prevails.
The constitutional text itself does not specifically mention defamation, libel, or slander, nor does it explicitly regulate how states may address those matters.
Therefore, from the text alone, a state law restricting speech would only be invalid under the Supremacy Clause if it were inconsistent with a constitutional provision that actually applies to the states. The original First Amendment text does not explicitly say “states shall make no law,” which is why later constitutional developments—particularly the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—became central to applying many Bill of Rights protections against the states.
While the First Amendment explicitly restricts only Congress, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause incorporates its protections against the states, ensuring that fundamental liberties—including freedom of speech—are preserved nationwide. This is not selective preference; it is the settled interpretation of the Constitution under the Supremacy Clause, which binds all government actors. Judicial precedent defining both the scope and limits of speech—including exceptions for threats, fraud, and defamation—is not optional, but authoritative, reflecting the reasoned balance between individual liberty and societal order. To ignore incorporation or selectively accept judicial interpretation is to substitute personal preference for the rule of law.
Now finally someone is making a coherent argument. Thank you 🙏
14th Due Process Clause
No State shall make…any law which shall…deprive any person of…liberty….
Liberty is freedom and freedom of speech, which includes defamation.
State defamation laws are unconstitutional.
Has anyone noticed that X got up on the wrong side of the floor this morning?
He got squashed over and over yesterday and now He’s lashing out at everybody, picking arguments, like a little Little League player benched for his silliness, but spendkng the rest of the game yelling out criticism of players from behind the protective net of Turley’s open forum. He’s scary.
Anonymous,
It’s a bold strategy to call someone ‘scared’ while you’re the one hiding behind childish metaphors.
If my facts were actually ‘wrong,’ you’d be pointing them out instead of trying to psychoanalyze me through a protective net. You’re not ‘watching the game’; you’re just the guy screaming at the scoreboard because your team lost in court.
Put the pom-poms away and find a single factual error in my analysis. I’ll wait
What’s striking in this thread is the insistence that there was no threat to free speech precisely because the system worked.
X’s shield and roof analogies actually highlight the blind spot. Why do we need a shield in the first place? Why do we build strong roofs? Why do we put deadbolts on doors? Why do we require voter ID or maintain border security? Because threats exist.
But the “why” question is exactly the question many people never ask. They start the analysis at the conclusion instead of asking why the process began at all.
Our constitutional system is that shield, that roof, that deadbolt. Checks and balances exist because government power must constantly be restrained. When people stop asking why a prosecution begins and focus only on the verdict at the end, they miss the point entirely.
The Founding generation understood this. They didn’t react to a single offense. They watched a pattern develop over time, what the Declaration called a “long train of abuses and usurpations.” Those who refuse to ask why eventually find themselves facing a sword without the shield, because they failed to recognize the threat was real in the first place.
Those who refuse to ask why eventually find themselves facing a sword without the shield . . .
This eloquent phrase captures a point I was trying to make to an anonymous commenter on the “older comments” page, who turned out to be little more than a troll with no real interest in a rational discussion.
My point is this: when people applaud restrictions on fundamental freedoms they agree with — such as indicating it’s fine and dandy for the state to criminalize advertising practices they dislike — they make a mistake to assume these restrictions will only ever go one way. Thus, by analogy, many liberals believe Jack Phillips should have no 1A defense when sued for refusing to bake a cake with a message celebrating gay marriage that violates his beliefs. But what if a liberal cake shop owner was sued for refusing to bake a cake celebrating conversion therapy, or with a message such as “Homosexual conduct is wrong and harmful”? They would want *that* owner to have a 1A defense. So they should be on Jack Phillips’s side.
Applied to the present case, the people who are saying, “It’s not a violation of free speech because it only criminalizes advertising,” should ask themselves: would they have the same viewpoint about a law in some other country that criminalizes advertising a gay pride event? I doubt they would shrug that one off.
Bottom line: before a person approves of restrictions on basic freedoms or shrugs them off as not problematic, he should ask himself what if the shoe was on the other foot? Because the err to the extent they assume such laws will only ever restrict messages that they disagree with.
Oldmanfromkansas, your argument relies on a false equivalency. There is a massive legal difference between a consumer protection law targeting harmful medical practices and a law targeting a ‘Pride event’ or a personal belief.
You’re worried about ‘the shoe being on the other foot,’ but the Maltese court already solved that problem. By acquitting Grech, the judge ruled that sharing a personal story is not the same as advertising a service. This created a legal shield that protects both sides equally.
You’re arguing against a ‘restriction’ that the court just officially narrowed to ensure it can’t be used to suppress personal expression. The ‘referee’ didn’t just call a foul; she clarified the rules so the game stays fair for everyone.
. . . law targeting harmful medical practices . . .
No, saying this kind of therapy is “harmful” is an ideological statement, not a medical one. It is nothing like saying that cigarettes cause lung cancer.
. . . the Maltese court already solved that problem.
So if Hungary passed a law banning the advertising of gay pride events, and someone was prosecuted for a FB conversation, and the court in Hungary said, “Not guilty: it was just telling an experience, not advertising,” you’d say: “Fine, the Hungarian court solved the problem, and so there is no free speech issue? I doubt it.
Olly answered that very weak and faulty argument above. You have trouble imagining the shoe ever being on the other foot, but that’s where you err. Once you approve tyrannical measures to implement your preferred policies, you open the door to approval of tyrranical measures to implement policies you dislike.
BS. You’ll convert or ill torture you by sending you to hell.
The ultimate weapon
BS. It’s by choice. And nobody can send another person to hell. You are so FOS.
Sure you can. Ask any Christian where gays are going. Then they’ll tell you they didn’t do it. God did. As if they know that. Yes, Islam will send you there today.
Gay parades can exist because everyone has a choice to make moral or immoral decisions. It’s another thing to pass laws that say there will be gay parades or gay marriages. It doesn’t have universality at the least and remains an immoral choice. It’s another thing again to say you’ll go to hell by passing judgement.
The laws are immoral laws. The cake baker must follow laws. Free speech isn’t an immoral law until you’ve spoken. What’s congress doing? Coercing speech with immunity.
No, none of the Christians I know (and there are many) say that. Nor does Christianity even remotely suggest that one person has the power to send another person to hell. You really don’t know what you’re talking about. What you do want to do is take away people’s choice to receive a certain type of therapy that they want to receive. Me personally, I don’t have an opinion on the therapy other than I think people who want it should be able to get it without bullies like you standing in their way. I’m for freedom, you’re for tyranny. You dislike the implications of the therapy (that in some instances it might succeed), so you want to take away people’s choices to do what they believe is in their best interests. That’s fascism.
😂 omfk so untrue. Every Christian thinks, believes there are hells and you’re going there unless you’re perfect. Their proof that God sends them to hell is that they know it. They’ll cheer and spit as you’re locked up just as they did to Jesus Christ.
I have nothing against therapy unless it uses snake bites or leeches. Therapy based on sound reasoning is alright with me. In fact if a gay man seeks therapy and through his will chooses not to practice immorality then he’s done moral work. I haven’t as I’ve never been gay.
You may describe Christianity as you wish, but your description bears no resemblance to reality.
How exactly do you imagine anyone can send another person to Hell? Either God sends them there or He doesn’t; no person can ever influence that decision.
If you tell someone that if he doesn’t take better care of himself he’ll end up in an early grave you may be correct or incorrect, but you are absolutely not killing him! If he dies he will have killed himself and you will not be in any way responsible. In exactly the same way if you tell someone that if they don’t change their ways they will go to Hell, you may be correct or incorrect, but you are absolutely not sending him there. If he ends up there God will have sent him, and you will not be in any way responsible.
😂 I don’t know anyone, Milhouse, freely choosing to live around thieves except other thieves and those having no choice by lack of resources remain because they must. That creates hell, Milhouse. God didn’t cause the segregation nor dictate it.
You won’t be coming to dinner , Milhouse. 😂
It’s wrong to think that God would do such.
oldman
You make no attempt whatsoever answer criticisms made by X and others.
You keep persistently and obsessively drifting off in more and more absurd hypotheticals to set up your straw man.
You keep obsessively commenting about whether conversion therapy is harmful, and try to compare it to other medical issues. You keep trying to make the point that in your view, saying that conversion therapy is “harmful” is an ideological statement, not a medical statement.
This is a completely pointless irrelevant comment.
Your opinion of the harmfulness or otherwise of conversion therapy is completely irrelevant to this case.
The fact is that in Malta, conversion therapy is considered to be harmful whether you like that or not.
And you further compound the absurdities by drifting off into whether Hungary may or may not ban the advertising of gay events.
Who cares ??
This absurd hypothetical has absolutely nothing to do with what is going on in Malta with regard to conversion therapy.
The sad truth is that if you think these irrelevant hypotheticals have anything to do with this case, then it simply reveals that you are not in a stable state of mind.
“Conversion therapy” is harmful. But promoting it is free speech, especially if done for no commercial gain. The government can prevent me from selling Laetrile, or from treating people with it, but it has no right to prevent me from telling people how good I think it is and encouraging them to seek out someone who will provide it to them. I may be morally culpable for such misleading speech, but it’s not the government’s right to prevent me. And countries that abridge the freedom of speech are evil and wrong, because that freedom is not granted by the US constitution, it’s one of the unalienable rights with which all men are endowed by their Creator.
No, saying this kind of therapy is “harmful” is an ideological statement, not a medical one. It is nothing like saying that cigarettes cause lung cancer.
Sorry, old man, but you’re wrong about that. The “therapy” that goes by the name “conversion therapy” is objectively harmful to its victims. It’s been proven harmful many times in court. The victims are still around and you can talk to them if you are really interested in the truth and not just in making your own ideological statements. They have been harmed and they’re still living with the damage that was done to them.
To the extent that states are allowed to regulate the practice of medicine, then they’re allowed to ban this specific practice. To the extent that the first amendment prohibits them from regulating the dispensing of free medical advice, it also prohibits them from punishing anyone for talking up this harmful “therapy” without charging money.
Regulating the practice of medicine is one thing. Conversion therapy doesn’t necessarily use any medicine. Much of the time it is talk therapy. People who want talk therapy should be able to get it. To ban it or ban its advertising is a ridiculous infringement on freedom of speech.
Talk therapy as a form of medical practice is subject to state regulation. If you set yourself up as a medical practitioner and charge people money by subjecting people to a technique that you claim will “cure” them of some condition they wish to be rid of, you are practicing medicine. And if, rather than helping them your technique does them real harm, then the state has the right to stop you.
Have you ever spoken to someone who was subjected to this “conversion therapy” quackery? If you haven’t, seek them out and hear their stories, see the pain they suffered and the way their lives were messed up. Or find the transcripts of the cases they brought against the “therapists”, and their testimony before legislative committees advocating laws to curb the practice.
Talk therapy that involves no medicine is not a form of medicine, by definition. As for its results, I’ve heard testimony from people for whom it was successful and they were glad they got it. I don’t conclude from that that it is always successful, and anyone who doesn’t want it doesn’t have to have it. But for adults who want it, I think they should have that choice. I think any law that takes that choice away from adults is based on ideology, not medicine.
Talk therapy that involves no medicine is not a form of medicine, by definition.
What do you mean by “that involves no medicine”? What do you think “medicine” means? Talk therapy is medicine, which is why you need a license to practice it professionally.
As far as I know this “conversion therapy” has no proven success stories at all, and it has harmed many people.
I do believe it is possible for a person’s sexual orientation to change, in either direction, but no one has yet discovered a technique that can reliably trigger such a change on purpose. Every single credible story I’ve heard of such a change involves it happening spontaneously, without the person trying to change it or even wanting to. It may well be that one day the mechanism for the change will be discovered, and people will be able to trigger it at will. But the technique known as “conversion therapy” is not that trigger. It’s as barbaric and primitive as the sort of treatment that Rosemary Kennedy got.
“By acquitting Grech, the judge ruled that sharing a personal story is not the same as advertising a service.”
Do you know why we have Slapp laws in this country?
Have you read the Constitution?
Do you understand that one cannot use the law retroactively?
This case was an abomination.
X – YOU are the one dealing with a false comparison.
What is the differences between a “harmful medical practice” and a personal beleif ?
NOTHING – those of you have destroyed any semblance of objective science. With the result that you can claim to do whatever you please with the law and Claim that you are doing so based on science or experts or …
When all you are doing is imposing YOUR values by Force.
I was unsure for a few sentences whether Malta was prosecuting someone for homosexual advocacy or for opposing homosexuality.
While that was clear within a few sentences – the FACT is most of the world is still OPENLY hostile to homosexuality – in most of the world you can still go to jail, in some parts you can be executed. Often parts of the world that you left wing nuts Fawn over homosexuality is a crime and in some of them on resulting in execution.
I would further note the “scientific” argument would be for Laws BARRING homosexuality – as only a small minority of people are homosexual and as society’s survival depends on reproduction.
But if we are going to allow people to make choices that are not in the interests of society as a whole according to science. Or even more important allow people to make choices that are either unclear or neutral with respect to society.
Put more simply if we are going to recognize the FACT that individual rights MUST trump those of society – except where force and fraud are involved,
They we can not have the regulations YOU claim – regardless of what you name them.
Myriads of pracitices that were deemed HARMFUL in the past are considered harmless or even helpful today.
And visa versa.
Various sexual practices among those.
While it is LIKELY that the judgement of “experts” science, etc. Today is somewhat better than in the past.
It is ALSO CERTAIN that on many many many things modern experts are WRONG – just as those of the past were.
We MAY in the future discover a homosexual or trans gene – or some other clear biological marker that makes sexual prefernces nearly immutable.
OR we may discover that they are not immutable and determine how to change them.
Who can know for certain what the future will bring.
Today the ONLY core difference between Pedophila and homosexuality and Trans-sexuality is that we societally deem sex with children to be morally and criminally wrong.
Just as in the past we deemed sex with the same sex as morally and criminally wrong.
Would you be opposed if in the future we found a way to “fix” pedophiles so that they no longer took a sexual interest in children ?
Regardless my point in the above is that much of what YOU decide is somehow objective – is based in actual harm, is really just based in either past or current conceptions of morality.
I do personally think that morality – even ancient morality often has real foundations. The semetic traditions regarding what is “clean” and what is “unclean” rested on actual facts of nature that were True 3000 years ago that are not typically today.
Again a point – things that seem to be founded in science, are often founded in the conditions of the moment.
THEREFORE we can not an should not give govenrment the power to make laws in these domains.
We do not need consumer protection laws – not to preclude people from getting Sexual reassignment surgery, not to preclude others from condemning such surgery.
. The semetic traditions regarding what is “clean” and what is “unclean” rested on actual facts of nature that were True 3000 years ago that are not typically today.
No, they did not rest on any facts of nature. There is no physical difference between the meat of an animal that was slaughtered by cutting its aesophagus and trachea in a single cut of a knife with no nicks, and one that was slaughtered in some other way. And yet the former is clean and the latter unclean. There was never any scientific explanation for why a slice of cheese and a hamburger can both be clean, and yet their combination is unclean. These are all simply dictates by God, to be accepted or rejected depending on whether one believes that He exists and that He did give these orders.
Jack Philips, Masterpiece, enjoyed his 5th Amendment right, per James Madison, to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property in exclusion of every other individual, and his legal right to preclude trespass.
The “incorporated” right to private property prevailed; religion was irrelevant.
Perhaps you retain the full capacity to further pontificate and nullify James Madison.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
He should have baked the cake because gay marriage is lawful. Abortion is lawful. Either the laws are moral or not. Let’s have immoral laws is an argument?
Such bs
Private property? Not so private. Let’s increase Jack’s taxes. Let’s confiscate it by domain. Let’s tax his income, he pays a loan with it and tax again. The thief doesn’t know private property.
Olly, your continuance to miss the point has become an obstacle to understanding the problem.
Your ‘shield’ analogy actually proves my point, not yours. We don’t say a roof is ‘failing’ because it rains; we say it’s working because the people inside are dry.
You’re so focused on the ‘threat’ of the rain (the trial) that you’re ignoring the fact that the roof (the court) did exactly what it was built to do. By winning this case, the defendants didn’t just survive a ‘threat’; they bolted the door shut for everyone else by creating a clear legal rule. If a total victory in court still feels like a ‘long train of abuses’ to you, then you aren’t looking for a shield—you’re just looking for a reason to feel like you’re at war with the system.
X, You’re still misidentifying where the “rain” begins. The trial was not the rain. The trial was the roof. Courts are the roof in a system of checks and balances.
The rain was the state’s decision to prosecute a man and two journalists over an interview and personal testimony under an advertising statute. That act of government power is what triggered the need for the roof.
Yes, the court did its job and stopped it. Good. That’s exactly how the roof is supposed to work. But the existence of the roof does not mean there was never any rain. It means the rain required a roof. Your argument treats the successful defense as proof the threat never existed. Mine recognizes that the roof exists precisely because the rain does.
The Founders understood this well. Rights are not preserved because government never pushes boundaries. They are preserved because citizens and courts push back when it does.
So no, this is not “war with the system.” It’s recognizing why the system was built the way it was in the first place.
It is also dishonest to pretend that being charged with a crime and going through a trial are no big deal as long as the person is acquitted in the end. Not only is that process costly in time, money, anxiety, and lost opportunities, but it’s even worse when the law itself is a ridiculous abridgment of natural rights such as freedom of speech.
Oldman,
Exactly right. When you begin your thinking in the middle of the story instead of at the beginning, you can reach all sorts of convenient conclusions.
If the starting point is the acquittal, everything looks fine. The system worked.
But if you start where the story actually begins, with the state deciding to charge a man and two journalists over an interview and personal testimony, the question becomes very different.
Why did that prosecution begin in the first place?
Courts acting as a check are the shield. The prosecution is the swing of the sword that makes the shield necessary.
So yes, the court ultimately did its job. But pretending there was never any threat to the right because the shield held misses the entire point.
Olly, you aren’t starting at the ‘beginning’; you’re starting with a misunderstanding of how the Adversarial System works. The ‘swing of the sword’ isn’t an attack on the system—it is the system. For a court to establish a precedent that protects speech, there must be a case or controversy to decide. Without the prosecution, you have no ruling, no clarity, and no protection. You’re arguing that the mechanism used to define our rights is somehow proof that those rights are being destroyed.
Look at it from a legislative intent point of view,
The ‘beginning’ of this story isn’t the prosecution—it’s the Statutory Law itself. The executive branch doesn’t just invent charges; they enforce what is on the books. If a law is ‘ridiculous,’ the only way to neutralize it is through the exact court process you’re complaining about. By framing the prosecution as a ‘sword,’ you’re ignoring that the trial is the only place where that sword is actually blunted for everyone else. The process isn’t a bug; it’s the feature that keeps the ‘roof’ relevant.
False, Speech is presumptively protected, and that presumption can only be overcome by a compelling societal interest, and then only in the least intrusive means possible.
The very fact of this trial is a FAILURE. The entire purpose of rights is to chase the state entirely out of that domain.
You are not free if the state can threaten to jail you for excising your rights.
You rant about a court needing a precedent – that is BS – the precedent is the right.
If we can not dispatch state efforts to violate peoples rights without a criminal trial – then those rights might as well not exist.
The mere possibility of a criminal trial has a chilling effect on free speech.
So there are two threats to liberty: this particular law itself, and the overzealous prosecutor.
Oldmanfromkansas, You argue that the trial is an ‘abridgment of natural rights,’ but the trial is actually the only place where those rights are affirmed and codified. If the state never ‘rained,’ the ‘roof’ would never have the opportunity to create the very precedents that protect you. You’re complaining about the cost of the cure while ignoring that the cure—the acquittal—is what actually stops the law from being applied to the next person.
Do you understand?
I did not argue that the trial is an abridgment of natural rights. Reread my comment, more carefully, and you’ll see you misunderstood it.
Oldmanfromkansas,
I read it quite carefully. You explicitly stated that the process—the ‘time, money, anxiety, and lost opportunities’—is ‘even worse’ when the law is an abridgment of natural rights. By linking the personal toll of the trial directly to the abridgment of speech, you are arguing that the process itself is the vehicle for that violation.
If you aren’t arguing that the trial is part of the abridgment, why did you label those personal costs as the ‘worse’ half of the equation?
What I said was that being put through the process is costly, and having to incur those costs is even more frustrating when the law they tried to punish you with is a ridiculous law.
To me both points seem like common sense.
Oldmanfromkansas, You’re conflating frustration with illegitimacy. Yes, trials are expensive and anxious—that is common sense. But it is not common sense to label the prosecutor a ‘threat to liberty’ simply because they triggered the process that proved you were right. By your logic, any time the state loses a case, it has committed a crime against the citizen. That’s a circular argument that treats the system’s corrective mechanism as a systemic failure.
You’re putting words in my mouth that I never said.
Overzealous prosecutors are a threat to liberty, as are ridiculous laws that abridge natural rights.
Trials are costly to a defendant even when they result in an acquittal, and the frustration of having to incur those costs is made worse when the law under which the overzealous prosecutor tried to nail you is a ridiculous law.
I maintain that all of the above is mere common sense.
Laws abridging natural rights are illegitimate. They may not be prosecuted period.
A legislature that passes a law abridging a natural right is prima fascia a threat to liberty.
A prosecutor who attempts to enforce such a law or who stretches an existing law to infringe on rights – is a threat to liberty.
A court that does not throw such prosecutions out immediately is a threat to liberty.
We defend liberty with soldiers from the threat to liberty of invading armies.
Wehn we have to defend liberty with lawyers in the courts of our own country – our liberty has been diminished. We are no longer free.
Oldmanfromkansas, I’m not putting words in your mouth; I’m pointing out your hindsight bias. You only label the prosecutor ‘overzealous’ because the defendant won. In a rule-of-law system, the trial is the only mechanism we have to determine if a law is ‘ridiculous’ or not. By calling the process a ‘threat’ simply because it tests a boundary you value, you’re arguing against the very adversarial system that ultimately protected the defendant
You only label the prosecutor ‘overzealous’ because the defendant won.
No, that’s not the reason. It was overzealous to even bring the prosecution in this case.
To explain by analogy. First, I’m very patriotic, I love the US and the American flag, and it pains me to see others burn it. But . . . I would consider a law criminalizing the burning of Old Glory to be a ridiculous infringement on freedom of expression.
Now, suppose a law of that nature were to pass in some jurisdiction, which mandates 6 months in prison for a conviction, and it is upheld by the Supreme Court (which would have to overturn its 1989 5-4 precedent in Texas v. Johnson).
Now on top of that, suppose in that jurisdiction, a birthday party is held with a birthday cake and candles that have a stars-and-stripes design. The prosecutor finds out about the burning of the candles, and prosecutes the person who lit the candles. The defendant is acquitted, but not before having to pay thousands in legal fees, take time away from work, and suffer the anxiety of possibly being criminally punished and spending six months in prison.
In that situation, the law itself is ridiculous and a threat to freedom, and the prosecutor’s overzealous actions in bringing a ridiculous prosecution under that law over birthday candles is also a threat to freedom. It’s not a perfect analogy in every way – few analogies are – but it does illustrate my point: that there is a distinction between ordinary prosecutions where the defendant wins, and overzealous prosecutions where the defendant is acquitted. In the present case the prosecutor was, in my opinion, overzealous in prosecuting based on what was clearly a conversation and testimony of one individual, and not advertising.
The specific heinous label applied to the prosecutor is unimportant. Any label that conveys EVIL is fine.
If the prosecutor was correctly applying the existing law – then the EVIL rests with the legislature.
I was going to say that critical thinking eludes you – but ordinary thinking seems to.
You do not have a natural right – if you can be drug into court – criminally or civilly in violation of that right.
It is the reason that in the US the first amendment starts with “Congress shall make no law”.
Government may not subject you to even the possibility of punishment for exercising a right, otherwise – you do not have that right.
” the trial is actually the only place where those rights are affirmed and codified. ”
False, rights come from nature – not courts, not government,
“If the state never ‘rained,”
No roof would be needed.
And you would be completely protected.
“the acquittal—is what actually stops the law from being applied to the next person.”
ROFL
Olly, a roof isn’t there to stop the sky from existing; it’s there to handle the weather. You’re describing the filing of a lawsuit as the ‘rain,’ but in a rule-of-law system, the legal process is the drainage system. The prosecution didn’t ‘break’ through a boundary; it entered the venue specifically designed to test it. If the ‘roof’ (the court) held perfectly, then the system functioned exactly as intended. You can’t claim the house is flooding just because it’s raining outside.
Your rhetoric is eating its own tail. You’re arguing that the remedy is proof of the malady. You define the prosecution as a ‘threat’ simply because the court blocked it. But if the court hadn’t blocked it, you’d call that a threat, too. In your world, the system is failing regardless of the outcome: if the government wins, they’ve overstepped; if the government loses, the ‘rain’ was so dangerous it required a roof. You’ve made ‘the system is under attack’ a circular conclusion that ignores the actual result. Your failure to grasp the simple conclusion is your biggest obstacle. You don’t seem to be able accept the end result is that simple.
“You define the prosecution as a ‘threat’ simply because the court blocked it.”
I will use the roof as a metaphor. The law should immediately repel the prosecutorial rain. This trial should not have proceeded this far. It should have been dismissed because an interview in 2022 should not be subject to laws passed in 2023 to assist the prosecution. Along with dismissal, the judge should have added a ruling to prevent the *Chilling Effect* that you neglect to recognize
the judge should have added a ruling to prevent the *Chilling Effect* that you neglect to recognize
Meyer – that is a good point, and it puts me in mind of arguments I sometimes see from the ACLU. Now, it cannot be denied that the ACLU is politically liberal, and that liberal Democrats have relied on it and its argumentation pretty heavily in the past. The ACLU often argues (with good reason) that when laws tending to limit expression are vague, they chill free speech by causing people to self-censor legitimate speech. The ACLU says these laws lack “breathing space” for protected expression, and they create uncertainty, leading people to avoid lawful speech. This has been a bulwark of liberal legal argumentation for decades now. So you’d think the liberals commenting here might understand that. But it seems when the speech being curtailed is speech they disagree with, suddenly the ACLU’s core position holds no sway.
Alan Dershowitz uses some of that logic, and in many respects, I consider it correct. Alan was asked how he could defend people of crimes they appeared guilty of, and didn’t he feel personal guilt. He responds that the law defines itself, and the punishment is set. But the law is supposed to be clear, and if not, the person cannot be convicted. He said, and I believe him, that his insistence on an absolutely clear law made laws clearer and prosecutors clearer as well. According to him, that is why the percent of federal crime convictions climbed.
That wiggle room can be a problem even though its existence is proper. The Torah makes a point that coincides with the chilling effect of(wiggle room- good and bad) and no retroactive laws. There is a consistent rule, Thou shalt not, followed by a punishment.
S. Meyer, Calling it a ‘threat’ only because it was blocked is like saying a bullet isn’t a threat just because it hit a bulletproof vest. The ‘roof’ of the law is supposed to repel the rain, not wait for the house to flood before fixing the leak. Applying a 2023 law to a 2022 interview is a literal constitutional glitch; the trial shouldn’t have been ‘blocked’ at the finish line—it should have been dismissed at the starting blocks to prevent the chilling effect you seem so determined to ignore.
X there are lots of threats that are perfectly lawful.
“I will kill you if you try to kill me”
But threats by government against natural rights are NEVER lawful.
GSX, you have performed a complete about-face. In your first comment, you argued that the ‘roof’ (the court) functioned perfectly because it handled the ‘weather’ (the trial). Now, you argue the ‘roof’ failed because the ‘rain’ was allowed inside at all.
This second post is diametrically opposed to your first. It’s as if you’re reworking AI-generated responses without following the train of thought from one post to the next. You’ve gone from defending the process as a success to attacking it as a ‘glitch’; which is it?
In a rule of law system people do not need a “roof” to protect them from violations of their rights – government does not violate their rights PERIOD.
When people have to go to court to protect their rights – Government has failed.
What about AA meetings? No charge but definitely group therapy by telling stories and difficulties with support.
Would anyone stop alcoholics meeting peaceably?
When we try people for things that are not crimes – such as free speech – that is NOT the system working.
That is the system FAILING miserably regardless of the outcome.
Turley has constructed a perfect victimhood trap for his readers: he has convinced them that even when they win, they’re actually losing. By framing the Matthew Grech case as a ‘repressive crackdown,’ he deliberately misrepresents a total legal victory as a defeat.
A real analysis would acknowledge that the Maltese court didn’t just ‘let Grech go’—it issued a categorical ruling that sharing personal testimony is protected speech. This didn’t ‘erode’ a right; it fortified it by creating a permanent legal shield for every citizen in Malta. Yet, Turley’s readers are so addicted to the narrative of persecution that they are treatng a successful defense of their rights as proof that those rights are gone.
The blog’s commenters are ‘ignoring the referee after the foul was called in their favor.’ They are so invested in the theater of alarmism that they’ve become blind to the fact that the system worked exactly as it should. If a full acquittal and a protective legal precedent still make you feel ‘suppressed,’ you aren’t looking for justice—you’re just looking for a reason to feel like a martyr. Turley isn’t analyzing the law; he’s manufacturing a crisis to keep his audience trapped in a cycle of manufactured rage.
This is not about Victimhood. It is not about Grech.
It is about a regime that threatens the natural rights of the people.
No the system did not work as it should
I would further note that as a rule acquitals in criminal trials provide very little legal protection or precident.
Precedent is set when COURTS – Judges decide that citizens rights were not protected.
Jury verdicts, even jury nullification are not precedent.
You rant about rage – Those who agree with Turley are angry. We may choose not to visit or invest in Malta.
But we are not going to bomb the courts.
Being angry at injustice – and the mere fact there was a trial is injustice, is to be lauded not condemned.
The dangerous rage is the lawless rage most commonly exemplified by the left.
These initiatives to foist an aberrant way of thinking and behavior is something much more than granting boys the ability to go into women’s bathrooms, boys who dress up as women being considered a “woman” etc. is not as much about these behaviors but are rather trojan horse subversion to whittle away at the tenants of western civilization.
Let’s be honest, there isn’t a woman alive who wants to go into a men’s public bathroom and stand in a puddle of pee or gaze on the filth that is often found in the men’s bathrooms. This is all about attacking the advancements of women’s rights. They allow these creeps into women’s sports and women’s prisons (where a larger majority are victims of sexual abuse). I would love to see one of these so called “women” who are mostly men who have cut off their parts and injected themselves with expensive (big pharma) drugs. I would love to see them have to go through menstruation, menopause, diseases that impact women’s health such as Sjogrens Syndrome, etc.
If a person who is able to buy cigarettes, alcohol, vote and buy property wants to change their sex, then it is their right to do so, so long as they are paying for it themselves. I am all for people being who they want to be, free from labels or being pigeon holed.
I was glad to see that the first detransitioned person who was a victim of malfeseance and malpractice, was successful in suing the people who destroyed their lives.
Those pushing this drivel are not our parent’s Democratic Party. JFK, Roosevelt and Truman would roll over in their graves if they could see the fall of the Democratic Party and its takeover by far left wing lunatics.
.This is all about attacking the advancements of women’s rights.
Just female athletes being deprived of awards and scholarship opportunities because a mediocre biological-male athlete couldn’t handle losing against other men. Such female athletes have trained their whole lives for these awards and scholarships, only to have them taken away because of the prevalance of a deranged political ideology held by the most deranged lunatis in society.
FWIW, I doubt most homosexuals approve of the above. Their attraction to people of the same sex, while hard for many heterosexuals to understand, at least does not amount to lunacy, and I predict a breakup between LGB and T sometime in the future.
No no no, once you’ve granted transgender is true and moral then you’ve lost the bathroom argument.
The use of government authoritarianism to exact preferred behavior reminds me of the infamous “Dr. Spock,” who allegedly counseled parents to not spank their children, and in later years, joined two others to lead an anti-draft rally during the Viet Nam war (“In New York, Dr. Spock said tonight that he hoped ‘100,000, 200,000 or even 500,000 young Americans either refuse to be drafted or to obey orders if [they are already] in military services.'” https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/spock-indicted.html) (is this where Mark Kelly and Ellisa Slotkin got their inspiration?).
Later, Spock allegedly recanted a few years before his death with this statement,
“We have reared a generation of brats. Parents aren’t firm enough with their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their resentment. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers. Of course, we did it with the best of intentions. We didn’t realize until it was too late how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self assurance of parents.” (Some critics claimed that the above quote was a compilation of independent Spock statements not particularly addressed to spanking, but Spock,- after receiving so much flak,- spent years trying to clarify what he said.)
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28022/did-dr-benjamin-spock-recant-his-child-rearing-teachings-later-in-life
Of course, SCOTUS later set the record straight, finding that spanking was not “cruel and unusual punishment (Ingraham v. Wright)
(Because of link limitation, see my link posted below on spanking popularity today.)
Soooooo, bringing this full circle for today’s topic, parents still spank their kids as needed; people still form massive and disruptive rallies over things they disagree with; and homosexuals still enjoy the right to either seek conversion counseling or alternatively live happily with their gay partners. This is the result of the VAST EXCHANGE OF OPINIONS permissible under our First Amendment, and I agree with the good professor on this.
However, I am often left with the frustration of wanting to cry out, “Is there a REAL–a definitive and dispositive, proven true-undisputedly and irreversibly, undeniably-correct–doctor in the house?
Lin,
That is an impressive amount of 1960s parenting trivia to pack into a response that completely avoids the 2026 legal reality. You’re busy litigating Dr. Spock’s old advice while ignoring the dispositive, proven-true answer right in front of you: the defendants won.
This is exactly where Turley’s argument becomes deliberately misleading. A real analysis would celebrate that the Maltese court didn’t just ‘let them go’—it issued a categorical ruling that sharing personal testimony is protected speech.
By winning, the defendants created a permanent legal shield for every citizen. Turley’s conclusion is misleading because it frames this successful protection of rights as proof that those rights are ‘eroding.’
You’re caught in a victimhood trap.
You’re ‘crying out’ for a definitive answer while ignoring the one the judge just handed you on a silver platter. If a full acquittal and a protective legal precedent still make you feel ‘suppressed,’ you aren’t looking for freedom; you’re looking for a reason to stay angry at a ‘brigade’ that just lost the argument. The system didn’t fail the First Amendment—it vindicated it.
The defendants won a case that never should have been brought.
This sis also what you do not get about the lawfare against Trump and others not on the far left.
Catholics should NOT have been surveiled by the FBI
Pro-life protestors should have have been SWATTed and prosecuted by the Biden admin.
The assorted criminal cases against Trump and those associated with him over the 2020 elections all NEVER should have seen the inside of a court room.
The EJC, James and Bragg cases should have been laughed out of court.
It is not weaponizing the law to go after political enemies.
It is weaponizing the law to do so when there is no crime, when you are doing so in violation of peoples rights.
Children respond to reason. Explain the reason. Spanking is unneeded. They’re great detectors of bs on the otherhand.
People who actually have kids beg to differ.
I apologize. At this point, I’m just a little more preoccupied with the initial salvos of Armageddon. I forget. It has been promised in blood for thousands of years and it is here. This is that time. After wars, pestilence, drought, earthquakes, signs in the heavens, knowledge exploding, the young caught up in revolt. Satan ruptured through the conscious and material world as Hitler bellowed instructions to mass murder God’s chosen, echoed through the dragons breathing fire all around Israel. This is it. Hide. Watch. It has started.
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
The principles you quote are not from the Constitution but from the Federalist Papers. Nowhere in the Constitution does it require a “manifest tenor” standard for judges. So you’re using an external source as the foundation for an argument that no external source should ever be used. I’m not saying you’re wrong, only that your argument appears self-contradictory.
Choice: Alexander Hamilton v. oldmanfromkansas.
So you have no answer of substance to my point. Got it. You just admitted that your argument is self-contradictory. It’s fine, you’re free to make self-contradictory arguments. Just don’t lie and pretend they’re coherent.
“Alexander Hamilton was a primary architect of the intellectual thesis behind the Constitution. His vision became the blueprint for how the United States actually operates.”
– ChatGPT
Fine, I have no objection to using the “manifest tenor” test based on an overarching “primary architect” standard. But I don’t pretend that, in doing so, the constitutional text is all that matters devoid of context and history. I don’t try and eat my cake and have it too.
If the rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities in the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not absolute, they do not exist.
False.
Absolutely:
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….
Defamation laws are not made by Congress. So if you’re relying on the text of the First Amendment then your argument fails.
Let’s face facts; it is long past time.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights must be implemented globally.
Copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights must be jettisoned now from planes all over Iran.
At this point it is evident that your aim is not to have an informative discussion but to clutter up this comment section with rubbish as a way of distracting from any useful debate by anyone else. GFY
Oldman
Notice none of the Ano’s have said zip about O-dumber bombing the heck out of Libya or Syria.
I wonder why? Could it be, because Nancy.P. when asked that question. She said he had the power to do just that… But now with Trump, it’s WRONG.
Dustoff – it is clear by now that the anon is just a troll and has no intention of engaging in an actual discussion.
oldman
The problem is that your concept of an actual discussion is to dismiss the facts, then set up a straw man with absurd irrelevant hypotheticals, and then attack the straw man.
For some reason you keep obsessing about baking cakes as if that has any relevance to the case at hand. You are utterly fixated on baking cakes. That is all you have talked about today.
A reasoned logical debate is not possible under these circumstances.
You are the real troll here, trying to divert and hijack the discussion to talk about baking cakes for some bizarre reason that apparently makes sense in your deranged state of mind.
Oh, my! The truth revealed. That has to hurt.
We’ll put you down as Anti-Constitution.
Noted.
Thanks, Karl.
Start here. Americans enjoy the freedom of speech but litigate against defamation. What??? Freedom of speech means precisely that no matter the “interpretation,” “doctrine,” and “precedents” of the high criminal “Dictatorship of the Black-Robed Juristocracy.” Those opposed to free speech must discover a viable workaround. Speech is free. FULL STOP.
You have personal rights to own and control use of your voice, face and likeness. You have rights to deter public defamation of your character by deceitful infowarriors.
You devalue your own infospace rights in your naive, one-sided, simple-minded zealotry for free speech. Are you going to wait until you become a victim to realize you willingly gave away your core rights? Wake up.
The freedom of speech is every man’s freedom, and you have no power whatsoever, in any way, shape, or form, to deny, modify, or transform that fact.
Americans enjoy the freedom of speech to defend their reputations and counter defamation without restraint.
Any and all laws criminalizing defamation deny constitutional rights and freedoms and are thereby unconstitutional.
Sorry, Karl.
Next question.
__________________
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….
Defamation laws are not made by Congress, but by the states. So your appeal to the absolute meaning of the text fails.
No state may deny Americans their constitutional rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities.
The constitutional right you rely on is the right to be free from laws made by Congress that abridge the freedom of speech. States are not Congress, so state defamation laws do not violate that right. In brief, you haven’t “advanced the ball” as lawyers say.
Certainly the idea was for the Constitution to reveal and provide all natural and God-given rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities and for the states to immediately void and deny them.
You appeal to “the idea” rather than what the Constitution actually says when it suits you, but then you appeal to the text and suggest nothing else matters when it suits you.
Me personally, I’m an avid fan of freedom of speech and incorporating 1A freedom to the states through 14A. But I don’t pretend there is no judicial interpretation that makes that possible. And therefore I don’t pretend freedom of speech is absolute, as that same judicial interpretative exercise has pointed out that some speech doesn’t fall within 1A’s scope, such as fraud, terroristic threats, fighting words, and defamation , to name a few examples.
This dunce has never read the Supremacy Clause.
The supremacy clause is irrelevant to this topic. Nothing in the original constitution or the Bill of Rights prohibited the states from violating people’s rights, and Congress wasn’t given the power to make a law to that effect. So there was nothing that could override state censorship laws, until the 14th was ratified.
There is no contradiction. You are free to damage another person’s reputation with falsehoods, but you must compensate that person for the damage you caused, if that person can prove both the falsity of your statements and the economic damage it caused to him. By the same token, you are free to damage his property through carelessness or intentional conduct, but you must compensate him for the economic damage you caused.
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….
I answered you above. Defamation laws are not made by Congress.
Gitlow v. New York (1925) prevented states from denying freedom of speech by interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to apply the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to the states.
Originally, the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law…”, meaning it restricted only the federal government. Earlier, the Supreme Court of the United States confirmed this in Barron v. Baltimore (1833).
In Gitlow, however, the Court held that freedom of speech and press are fundamental personal rights protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from infringement by the states. In other words, the Court reasoned that because these liberties are fundamental to ordered liberty, a state cannot violate them without violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.
Importantly, the Court upheld Gitlow’s conviction anyway, using the “bad tendency” test then in place. But the case became historically important because it announced the principle that First Amendment freedoms apply to state governments, beginning the modern doctrine of selective incorporation.
✅ In short: Gitlow v. New York did not change the text of the First Amendment; instead, it held that the Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from infringing the fundamental speech rights protected by the First Amendment, thereby extending those protections beyond Congress to the states.
– ChatGPT
I am aware that some of the rights appearing in the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech, have been incorporated to the states through the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. My point is that you are relying on a strict interpretation of the text “shall make no law” to suggest that freedom of speech is absolute. For one thing, this is a position the Supreme Court has rejected. So you want to rely on the Supreme Court’s absolute authority when it says things you like (1st Amendment restrictions apply to the states) but not when it says things you dislike (freedom of speech is not absolute).
Second, and even more important, you want to say some of 1A’s text (“no law”) is to be applied in a strict, absolute way, but other portions of the text (limiting the prohibition to actions of Congress) should not be. So your argument is that the text should be followed literally when you agree with it but not when you disagree with it. That is an argument from preference, not law.
The effect: Incorporated freedoms, including the freedom of speech, are absolute and cannot be denied by states.
Freedom of speech is absolute, and people must be judicious in their use of it and should not abuse the freedom, and no law shall be made abridging it.
Threats are not actionable and are not crimes committed, and Americans enjoy the freedom of speech to defend their reputations and counter defamation without restraint.
Because you say so? Your only authority in making these assertions is your own mind. You’ve tried to back them up with selectively reading either the constitutional text, or Supreme Court opinions. I have pointed out such selectivity, and how it makes your arguments incoherent. You now respond by just making all sorts of bald assertions, and you have given up trying to support them.
You circumvent that constitutional facts and should review incorporation by the 14th and the Supremacy clause.
The 14th incorporates against the states the same restrictions that the 1st imposes on Congress. Including the exceptions to those restrictions. Neither Congress nor any state (post-14A) may make any law abridging the freedom of speech — but defamation laws don’t abridge that freedom, because the freedom never included a right to defame people.
The best proof that the freedom of speech has exceptions is that the original constitution explicitly granted Congress the power to make copyright laws, which inherently restrict speech. And no one ever suggested that when they amended the constitution a short time later to add the 1st amendment, this nullified the copyrights power in the original constitution. Obviously people understood that the freedom of speech doesn’t and never did include breach of copyright, so Congress remains free to ban it.
Turley either does not know the facts of this case or is deliberately misrepresenting the case to make some sort of point about free speech, which is totally irrelevant in this case.
Here are the facts.
The explicit ADVERTISING of conversion therapy is banned by statute in Malta, because it is considered harmful. There are no laws prohibiting conversion therapy itself. Conversion therapy is perfectly legal, you just can’t explicitly advertise conversion therapy services for a fee. In the same way, tobacco products are perfectly legal in the United States, you just can’t advertise tobacco for sale, because it is considered harmful.
In this case, the defendants engaged in an online discussion about conversion therapy. They were affiliated with an organization, the International Federation for Therapeutic & Counselling Choice (IFTCC), which provides conversion therapy for a fee, which is perfectly legal.
However, some people who watched this online discussion considered that it was an advertisement for the services of IFTCC, which would be illegal, and they lodged a complaint with the authorities.
The defendants were charged with illegally advertising conversion therapy for a fee. However, the judge dismissed the charges and ruled that the online discussion did not rise to the level of explicit advertising of conversion services for a fee. The ruling preserved and affirmed the free speech rights of the defendants to talk about conversion therapy.
There is absolutely no free speech issue here.
In fact the court ruled to preserve the free speech right to talk about conversion therapy.
So if a more conservative country had a law making it a crime to advertise a gay pride event, you’d say there’s no free speech issue with that? (See my longer reply to you on the “older comments” page.)
Sophistic bilge.
Yet again, Turley spreading lies about what is going on in Europe, whether through wilful ignorance or malice, just to push his obsession framed wholly in the US Constitution, a document wholly irrelevant outside of the USA. It would be like Europeans trying to foist our views and laws on gun control on the USA. Turley needs to STFU, and stick to legal matters in the USA; it is not as if they are not in a bad enough mess, is it?
Malta’s constitution guarantees freedom of speech. The good professor, whom you slander while taking advantage of his generosity, is free to express his concerns about the erosion of basic freedoms in the very continent that birthed Western civilization and the liberties we enjoy.
If you are going to accuse me of anything, learn the difference between slander and libel… And this is not libel; Turley is either massively out of his depth and showing an embarrassing level of ignorance, or wilfully distorting facts just to plug his own tawdry books yet again. Either way, not what one would hope to see from a tenured professor at a respected university, sadly more what one would expect from a rent-a-gob for Fox.
Okay, so you make a pedantic namby-pamby point about slander and libel being different. Fine, you take advantage of his generosity to make commenting available free of charge, just to libel him. Happy?
Professor Turley is a tenured law professor, a best-selling author, and a widely-recognized expert on constitutional law. The points he made in the above article are valid, and the article contains information and analysis that is interesting to many people who read his writings.
And you are? An anonymous troll who knows how to insult people with false accusations (libel) but has nothing constructive to offer. GFY, troll.
This is supposedly a legal blog, so differentiating between libel and slander is not namby-pamby pedantry. You, sir, are a delusional oaf who cannot understand that a) Turley is spreading lies through ignorance or malice regarding the facts of the case; b) he may be “a widely recognised expert on constitutional law” but nothing in the Maltese case has a single point of relevance to the US Constitution; and c) the US Constitution has not an ounce of relevance to the laws of European nations which Turley sets himself up to criticise. There is nothing generous about writing a blog which spreads lies and false propaganda about matters which Turley either does not understand or does not want to understand. I have not made a single false accusation, which you, for all your gibber and deflection, have utterly failed to demonstrate. I am no more anonymous than you, since “oldmanfromkansas” is, I am sure, not the name by which your parents registered your birth.
Toodles.
The 1A and 2A don’t apply to Malta, but the underlying rights do. The rights protected by the 1A and 2A pre-exist the US constitution, and of necessity apply everywhere. Malta has no more right to infringe them than the USA does.
Utter rubbish. The rights protected by the 1A and 2A do not pre-exist anywhere, as they are simply political constructs that US politicians decided to retrofit to your Constitution. There is no such thing as a “God-given” or “natural” right, only what societies and politicians decide to enact. You may think that freedom of speech, as defined in your 1A, is a good thing; fine. But do not go round trying to force it on every other society in the world. All modern democracies value freedom of speech, but the US 1A is just one, rather flawed, way of enshrining it. Those countries with much longer histories, and exposure to genuine extremist threats, internal and external, very, very sensibly balance freedom of speech with the interests of society as a whole. Reading the comments, one would think this was a US Constitutional issue. It is not. The US Constitution is UTTERLY AND WHOLLY irrelevant to this case, as is Turley’s deceitful commentary on it.
Toodles.
The rights protected by the 1A and 2A do not pre-exist anywhere, as they are simply political constructs that US politicians decided to retrofit to your Constitution.
That is wrong and evil. Natural rights are the premise on which the USA was founded. “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The 1A and 2A by their own terms don’t grant or create any rights, they presuppose that the rights exist, and merely protect them.
If you deny natural rights then you are simply an evil person, and we have every right, and the moral duty, to forcibly impose them on you whether you like it or not.
The freedom of speech, like the right to keep and bear arms, is not a creation of the US constitution. Both are unalienable rights belonging to all men, with which their Creator has endowed them, and NO government, anywhere in the world, has the right to infringe them. The US constitution merely enforces those rights on the US congress. Of course it can’t enforce them on the Maltese legislature, but the rights themselves still apply, and if the Maltese legislature infringes them it is doing wrong and should be condemned.
Prof. Turley has to find something to write his column about every day. In this case, a victory for free speech rights in a European country is framed as a defeat. There’s a bit of victim olympics going on here.
The good professor is highlighting the law itself which criminalizes freedom of speech in an EU country. If you find that boring, so be it, you are free to spend your time doing other things than reading his blog. There are millions of other blogs, why not spend your precious time reading one that interests you?
“Prof. Turley has to find something to write his column about every day…. just as long as it ignores Trumpian abuses of the law and Constitution, so has to rant about legal systems abroad on which he is not qualified to opine, but do not endanger his Fox gig.”
Fixed FOC.
One of the symptoms of the poisoning and subsequent destruction of one’s mind by the choice of left wing ideology is the fact that someone expressing an opinion with which leftists disagree triggers emotional pain in those leftists. I hate communism and those who espouse it disgust me but it doesn’t hurt me that they express support for a viciously wrong and openly false belief system. This ‘Please spare me psychological pain.’ argument against freedom of speech is malevolent nonsense. If someone says something with which you disagree, by all means prove them wrong. The problem for leftists is that since they are nihilists, that is, they reject all facts which clash with their ideology and all human values as such, they can’t form any rational arguments for or against anything. Their chosen leftist beliefs render them incapable of using reason or even appreciating rational arguments. The end result is the malevolent authoritarianism of the left which demands the government use force to suppress anything which they disagree including freedom of speech.
Well said. Very well said.