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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Thank Jehovah’s Witnesses for Speech Freedoms Date; 30 May, 2000 Source; USA TODAY If you have a front door, a Jehovah’s Witness probably has knocked on it. With well-dressed politeness and practiced persistence, they offer literature, biblical advice and a path to God’s kingdom as they see it. As often as not, they knock at the wrong time, when we’re too busy to listen or not particularly interested in shopping for another faith. But before you shut the door on a Jehovah’s Witness the next time, pause to consider the shameful persecution they suffered not too long ago, as well as the rich contributions they have made to the First Amendment freedoms we all enjoy. The legal clashes Jehovah’s Witnesses had with government authorities over their proselytizing and practices led to an astonishing total of 23 separate Supreme Court rulings between 1938 and 1946 – surely more than any other single religious organization engendered before or since. So frequently did Witnesses raise core First Amendment issues that Justice Harlan Riske Stone wrote, “The Jehovah’s Witnesses ought to have an endowment in view of the aid which they give in solving the legal problems of civil liberties.” Next month will mark the 60th anniversary of the most infamous Jehovah’s Witness decision, one the Supreme Court got completely wrong: Minersville School District vs. Gobitis. The court, smitten by pre-World War II patriotic fervor, ruled it was constitutional to require Jehovah’s Witness students to violate their faith and pledge allegiance to the flag in public school. A Pennsylvania school district had expelled Lillian and William Gobitas (their last name was misspelled in court papers) because they kept their arms down during the daily flag salute. The Witnesses’ interpretation of the Bible is that saluting the flag would amount to placing another deity before God. As recounted in Shawn Francis Peters’ powerful new book, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Supreme Court’s decision unleashed a wave of virulent anti-Jehovah’s Witness persecution across the nation that is little remembered today. Witness missionaries were chased and beaten by vigilantes in Texas. Their literature was confiscated and even burned. Less than a week after the court decision, a Kingdom Hall was stormed and torched in Kennebunk, Maine. American Legion posts harassed Witnesses nationwide. The American Civil Liberties Union reported to the Justice Department that nearly 1,500 Witnesses were physically attacked in more than 300 communities nationwide. One Sourthern sheriff told a reporter why Witnesses were being run out of town: “They’re traitors; the Supreme Courts sys so. Ain’t you heard?” Partly because of this violent reaction to its decision, the Supreme Court reversed itself with remarkable speed. On Flag Day of 1943, the court handed down West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette, using some of the most eloquent language ever written to describe the fist Amendment freedoms Americans enjoy. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion,” Justice Robert Jackson wrote. The active persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses abated somewhat, although thousands were arrested during World War II for seeking religious exemption from military service. They were accused, baselessly, of being Nazi sympathizers. And Witnesses continued to have run-ins with the law over leafleting, in part because of their sometimes-confrontational style. Peters tells of a Jehovah’s Witness caravan riding through Arkansas waving banners that read, “Religion is a Racket” and “Preachers are Crooks.” Today those message probably would not cause a stir, and even then they should not have triggered violence. But in the America of the 1940s, they were pretty close to fighting words. Speaking of “fighting words,” that concept was embodied in First Amendment law by another Jehovah’s Witness case, Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire. A Witness named Walter Chaplinsky was arrested in Rochester, N.H., for his fiery street-corner evangelizing, which included attacks on the “harlot” Catholic Church and on saluting the flag. The crowd that gathered became so angry that a man tried to impale Chaplinsky on a pole bearing the U.S. flag. The supreme Court’s 1942 decision placed “fighting words” such as those used by Chaplinsky outside the First Amendment’s protection if they “by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” That standard remains relevant today and helped defeat politically correct speech codes that would have censored far-less harmful speech. Perhaps the longest-lasting contribution the Witnesses made to Fist Amendment freedoms came in a 1940 case, Cantwell vs. Connecticut. The Supreme Court. said Jehovah’s Witness Newton Cantwell and his two sons, Jesse and Russell, should not have been arrested for soliciting without a license on the streets of New Haven, Conn. Before the Cantwell decision, it was not legally clear that the First Amendment protected religious practitioners against restrictions at the state and local levels as well as federal. But the Supreme Court in Cantwell said it did, thereby ushering in an era of greatly strengthened religious freedoms. All religions have the Jehovah’s Witnesses to thank for the expansion of that freedom. But in their publications and on their Web site (www.watchtower.org) Witnesses make scant mention of their persecution and their legal battles. Unlike other groups, the Witnesses have not resorted to televangelism and don’t claim a high profile presence in society. Witnesses – all 1 million of them in this country, 3.5 million of them world wide – spread their message door-to-door and through the publications Watchtower and Awake! “Their simple but eloquent voices tell a remarkable story,” Peters says, “one that lays bare the extremes of cowardice and courage so often found in nations engrossed in war.” -- Tony Mauro, the Supreme Court correspondent for American Lawyer Media and a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors, is the author of a new book, Illustrated Great Decision of the Supreme Court. Correction; members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses now number in excess of 7 million world wide. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 25.
#21. To: richard9151, christine, Jethro Tull (#0)
The plural "freedoms" is a misnomer. We are either free or we're exercising privileges that can be revoked with the stroke of a pen. Those who think in terms of absolute rights had best heed the words of the now deceased George Carlin, who said, "Go to Wikipedia and type in Japanese Americans-1942 and read all about your precious fucking rights." Just as another ongoing thread here is about the "Scary Obama gun grab", it should be mentioned that The NRA is little more than an auxiliary of the GOP. And, the worst gun grab in our history was only possible because of the cowardly participation of Republican reps and senators, none of who were punished with lowered ratings by the NRA. When it came time to pass that sweeping gun legislation the NRA and the GOP treated it as an act of God for which no one could be faulted for failing to resist. And, when the next phase of Operation Dismantle The Constitution is underway the NRA and the GOP will silently assent again, perhaps because the next gun grab will exempt WWII and Korean era military relics, just as the last one did. (Those vets have neither the will nor the energy to fight for America. Their weapons are no threat to the enemies who are destroying this country. And, they'd cheerfully stack them into trophies at the nearest police station or smelting foundry for another increase in elder benefits) The planners were quite clever to divide us the first time, and sure enough the result was "What do we VFW members care if AR-15s are outlawed as long as our precious .30 carbines and M1 Garands are safe?" Mother Jones Magazine even calmed their anti gun readers with the assurance that there was no need to worry about outlawing military relics and shotguns because they'd get those later once the power to outlaw any arbitrary class firearms was firmly cemented into the law. I can't believe that 4um is now home for people who still cling to the illusion of the two party system. "Anti socialist, anti gun Democrat" rants are just so much horse shit when the writing is on the wall but those stoopids can't seem to read it.
You are correct, of course. And, I thought that this was one of the places where I really disagreed with the Witnesses.... and said so. Their reply? Please explain to me/us how that is important? Is it any different that it has been and will be under any government of man? They then proceeded top show me, in the Bible, how we are to act in accord with such governments, EXCEPT where such actions contradict the Word of God. Which, by the way, is why the Witnesses are so reviled world wide. More so than pretty much any other group, we just do not hear about it on the news.
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