WorldNetDaily: Group demands apology from judge

Remember when I said that Judge Pamela Dembe of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas threw out the charges of the adult members of the Philadelphia Five? And remember my problem with what the judge said, that this country protects unpopular speech? At first glance, her opinion looked like a rebuke of the prosecution--who, after all, had come into court practically screaming that the Bible constituted "fighting words" and that the defendants represented a "hateful" movement. But then the judge said,

We are one of the very few countries that protects unpopular speech...And that means that Nazis can March in Skokie, Ill. ... That means that the Ku Klux Klan can march where they wish to. We cannot stifle speech because we don't want to hear it, or we don't want to hear it now.

That implied that the prosecutor was essentially correct in his characterization of the BIble and its believers, and that the only reason she was dismissing the case is that saying something hateful was not, legally, enough to throw someone in jail.

And for that reason the American Family Association wants the judge to apologize.

Now I think I know what was on Judge Dembe's mind. In mentioning the Nazi/Skokie and KKK cases, she was citing actual legal precedents. The trouble was that one could construe her words as a signal to the American left that if they want the bad ol' Christians put away, then they needed to amend the Constitution.

Instead, she should have said,

This Court fails to see any foundation for the overwrought characterization by the prosecution of the defendants as "hateful" or of the Bible as "fighting words." Indeed, if the rules of civil procedure so allowed, this Court could easily sanction the prosecution for using gratuitous "fighting words" of its own. But even if this Court could find a foundation for every characterization that the prosecution has made, it would be totally, completely, and utterly irrelevant. The Constitution of the United States, as also the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, makes explicit that it is not a permissible exercise of public authority or police power to prohibit the free exercise of religion, nor to abridge the freedom of speech. This court also cites two precedents involving groups whose words would be legitimately regarded as hateful and fighting words, but whose rights are still protected under the Federal and relevant State Constitutions.

Knowing this fully well, the prosecution has brought these defendants before this Court and charged them with various violent acts and conspiracy to commit the same--and yet has adduced no evidence whatsoever to lay anything approaching a sufficient foundation for those charges.

Instead, the Court ducked the issue of whether the prosecution had made an overwrought and unfounded characterization in open court. Again, the Court silently dismissed the prosecution's concerns as irrelevant, saying in effect, "Look, pals, there's no law against being a jerk, or a collection of jerks." Unfortunately, in so doing, Judge Dembe let the prosecution's name-calling stand as acceptable behavior in court and as an undisputed assertion--and as I said earlier, implied that she herself would not care to hear the Gospel preached to her, either personally or officially. Even King Herod Agrippa II did not so opine from his tribunal when he held a hearing in Saint Paul's case--the most he said was, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." (True enough, the then-sitting Roman Governor Porcius Festus blurted out that Paul the Bookworm was talking crazy, but he was not speaking as a judge, since Paul wasn't in his court at that juncture.) And that's why the AFA wants her to apologize.