Churches are Becoming Anti-Freedom of Speech Places

[Anxious Girl]

The Church can critize you, but you can't critize the Church! Welcome to Soviet Russia; err; I mean, Holy America!

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... m#comments

[margiebargie]

Well, at least they're not burning people at the stake anymore. That's progress.

[Witsec1]

1 Corinthians 6:1-8

6 If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? 2 Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 4 Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? 5 I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? 6 But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers!

7 The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters.

[Snickerdoodle]

Not that I'm standing up for this church because I know nothing about it, and because I don't believe in making snap judgements based on what's probably an incomplete media report, but I think this is the key statement in the article:

ACLU's Fine said the court will look at whether the defendants' statements qualify as opinions or assertions of fact. Opinions are protected under free speech law.

If she's stating things as fact that are actually untrue, then, yes, the church is well within its Constitutional rights to sue for defamation. No one, church or business or individual, wants their reputation ruined by the spread of untruths. Of course, if it comes out that her story is true, the public deserves to be warned.

Interesting case.

edited because I'm a formatting dummy.

[Anxious Girl]

Not that I'm standing up for this church because I know nothing about it, and because I don't believe in making snap judgements based on what's probably an incomplete media report, but I think this is the key statement in the article:

ACLU's Fine said the court will look at whether the defendants' statements qualify as opinions or assertions of fact. Opinions are protected under free speech law.

If she's stating things as fact that are actually untrue, then, yes, the church is well within its Constitutional rights to sue for defamation. No one, church or business or individual, wants their reputation ruined by the spread of untruths. Of course, if it comes out that her story is true, the public deserves to be warned.

Interesting case.

Religious institutions get laid off too much for the shit they do to others. Just because they're a church and somebody on the internet blogs their opinion and says it's fact doesn't mean they have to go to jail. What about all those quiver-full people and pro-lifer who state that life begins at conception as a fact? You can't regulate every single thing that people dislike on the internet, no matter how hard you may try. That's the beauty of the freedom of expression. Religious facilities need to be looked into more.

[mirele]

Do we have another topic about this? My head is so messed up from working on the PowerPoint from hell that I can't remember.

In any case, with every news article and blog post and bulletin board topic put up, this "Beaverton Grace Bible Church" is learning the truth of the Streisand Effect: "a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) I can't say that I'm sorry.

[Austin]

Since this is not the only person "Pastor" O'Neal is suing, methinks he's trying to shut people up.

With a church experience, all that one can share is one's subjective opinion. Years ago, my husband and I got into a beef with the church we were attending at the time and it blew up and we left. I never blogged (or wrote anywhere) about it, but if I had, I'm sure that our viewpoint would have differed from the pastor's or the elders'. I'm sure of this because even at the time, they couldn't see how they were treating people was wrong.

So I might have said, had I written a blog, something along the lines of, "They don't treat people very well. I found the love of Christ to be lacking in them". Well, that's my subjective opinion. They can't prove they have the love of Christ in them, and I can't prove that they don't, for instance.

So I'm really not sure how this gets settled in a courtroom, but it bothers me that the way this pastor "fights back" is through legal means. A lot of fundies, while eschewing anything at all from the government, love the legal system and will not hesitate for a moment to sue someone, even another Christian. I really think he's using the legal system to frighten the people he or his congregation have mistreated into silence.

[deelaem]

Also, in order to win their suit, they have to prove damages. I'm not sure how a church would prove that - people are free to leave or stay in a congregation. At least at the moment they are. If we get too many more godbags in power, this could change.

[mystweaver]

"We have not gone hastily to court," O'Neal said in a statement released to msnbc.com. "For three and a half years this group has been engaged in a public, church to church, and World Wide Web defamation, showing their willingness to discredit God, harm the church, harm wives, harm children, and harm the testimony of Christ's Gospel."

Harm church, harm wives, harm children...so does church = men? Or are men/husbands immune to that?

[Elle]

If the pastor had just let it go, a few people might have heard the criticism and chalked it up to someone who didn't like going there. It would have been forgotten. Now people all over the country, and some around the world, will hear about this and snicker and laugh for a long, long time.

[Kitty]

Since this is not the only person "Pastor" O'Neal is suing, methinks he's trying to shut people up.

With a church experience, all that one can share is one's subjective opinion. Years ago, my husband and I got into a beef with the church we were attending at the time and it blew up and we left. I never blogged (or wrote anywhere) about it, but if I had, I'm sure that our viewpoint would have differed from the pastor's or the elders'. I'm sure of this because even at the time, they couldn't see how they were treating people was wrong.

So I might have said, had I written a blog, something along the lines of, "They don't treat people very well. I found the love of Christ to be lacking in them". Well, that's my subjective opinion. They can't prove they have the love of Christ in them, and I can't prove that they don't, for instance.

So I'm really not sure how this gets settled in a courtroom, but it bothers me that the way this pastor "fights back" is through legal means. A lot of fundies, while eschewing anything at all from the government, love the legal system and will not hesitate for a moment to sue someone, even another Christian. I really think he's using the legal system to frighten the people he or his congregation have mistreated into silence.

Someone pointed out in the comments that Christians are not to sue each other; if there's a conflict, it's supposed to be worked out, and if it can't be worked out, both are to move on. Someone else pointed out that Christians suing other Christians makes Christians as a whole look weak since they're obviously not united like they should be.

Methinks Mr. O'Neal doth not read his Bible enough.

He very much is using the legal system to frighten and intimidate people. And this could set a very scary precedent- what if Bill Gothard found out about Recovering Grace, or Razing Ruth?

[Anxious Girl]

Someone pointed out in the comments that Christians are not to sue each other; if there's a conflict, it's supposed to be worked out, and if it can't be worked out, both are to move on. Someone else pointed out that Christians suing other Christians makes Christians as a whole look weak since they're obviously not united like they should be.

Methinks Mr. O'Neal doth not read his Bible enough.

He very much is using the legal system to frighten and intimidate people. And this could set a very scary precedent- what if Bill Gothard found out about Recovering Grace, or Razing Ruth?

I only watched parts of Handmaid's Tale on Youtube, but it was scary enough. I don't want this country to become the Republic of Gilead. I think we should make every church leader and republican read the book/watch the movie. As I said, I only saw parts and it was scary. *shuddes and is sorry if she sounds childish*