It is legal to call a police horse "gay"

[Cormac]

From my vague recollection, there is an offence known as conduct liable to cause a breach of the peace.

I can't see why that can't be the yardstick. And the test should be whether a reasonable person is likely to be provoked to retaliate.
Not easy for a jury in every case, but what is ?

If you're talking about "fighting words" then that makes sense. If you're talking about politics and offensive views or statements, then it doesn't, because no reasonable person should react with violence because of an offensive political statement or view.

There you have it. It's not, "should" they react in a non peaceful way. It's "are they likely" to react that way, given the provocation. That would be for a jury to decided.
There is an offence here which says exactly that, " conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace ".

But if someone has merely said something that is merely "offensive", then violence should never be the response!

[Xamonas Chegwé]

From my vague recollection, there is an offence known as conduct liable to cause a breach of the peace.

I can't see why that can't be the yardstick. And the test should be whether a reasonable person is likely to be provoked to retaliate.
Not easy for a jury in every case, but what is ?

If you're talking about "fighting words" then that makes sense. If you're talking about politics and offensive views or statements, then it doesn't, because no reasonable person should react with violence because of an offensive political statement or view.

There you have it. It's not, "should" they react in a non peaceful way. It's "are they likely" to react that way, given the provocation. That would be for a jury to decided.
There is an offence here which says exactly that, " conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace ".

But if someone has merely said something that is merely "offensive", then violence should never be the response!

And if it is, it's a gay response!

[Coito ergo sum]

From my vague recollection, there is an offence known as conduct liable to cause a breach of the peace.

I can't see why that can't be the yardstick. And the test should be whether a reasonable person is likely to be provoked to retaliate.
Not easy for a jury in every case, but what is ?

If you're talking about "fighting words" then that makes sense. If you're talking about politics and offensive views or statements, then it doesn't, because no reasonable person should react with violence because of an offensive political statement or view.

There you have it. It's not, "should" they react in a non peaceful way. It's "are they likely" to react that way, given the provocation. That would be for a jury to decided.
There is an offence here which says exactly that, " conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace ".

Is a reasonable person "likely" to react violently to words that offend them? I don't know, but it depends on the person's temperament and their culture. So, a law which would jail someone for saying words based solely on the reaction of the listener is an inherently unfair law. Because, for example, a devout Muslim may be likely to react violently or hostilely to insults against the false Prophet, whereas a Christian would not, and a Muslim would likely not react hostility to insults against Jesus whereas a Christian would be more likely to do so. Some people have thick skin and good senses of humor, and will just let insults roll of their shoulders, and others have eggshell personalities and will get upset. Who is "reasonable?" There are as likely as not as many opinions on that as their are juries.

What that means is that the law is inevitably, as applied, arbitrary and capricious and vague and ambiguous. It violates what we in the US would call "due process of law," part of which requires that the public be put on reasonable notice of the conduct that is proscribed by the law. If a law is so vague and ambiguous that a reasonable person cannot reasonably govern their behavior by it and/or cannot reasonably know IN ADVANCE what is and is not proscribed, then the law is violative of due process principles and must be discarded.

In the law that you describe, it is impossible for a person to know IN ADVANCE what they can't say. They have to read the minds and hearts of other people, such that they may or may not be subject to criminal sanction merely because someone else reacts badly to what they say. You say "leave it to the jury" which is a great and wonderful thing - however, the jury in this kind of a case is making basically an arbitrary decision, because the law is so vague that they don't know with any reasonable degree of specificity what conduct is wrong and what is acceptable. They're as much shooting in the dark as the person on the soapbox in Piccadilly Circus.

This is wholly and characteristically different than the normal functioning of the jury, which is to find the facts. Did John Doe kill Richard Roe? Did he preplan it? Did he act out of some impulse or because of some insanity? Those kinds of things. However, with this law, you're assigning to the jury the task of defining in each case whether a person's words were illegal not based on whether the words are themselves illegal, but rather based on the particular person's reaction to them, or even worse - based on some speculative, nonexistent "reasonable person's" reaction to them.

Does the jury ask itself "was the complaining party's reaction reasonable under the circumstacnes?" Or does the jury disregard the actual complaining party and hypothesize what a fictional "reasonable person" would do under similar circumstances and apply criminality to the accused based on that?

[mistermack]

But if someone has merely said something that is merely "offensive", then violence should never be the response!

I'm not sure what " a breach of the peace " constitutes in every case.
It wouldn't have to be violence. There are probably lots of breaches of the peace, short of violence.

It's a grey area. If I kick your car, is that violence? Or just something likely to lead to violence ? ( forgetting the criminal damage element ).
If I say "there is no god", in a debate, that's one thing. If I shout it in church, at a funeral, that's closer to "likely to cause a breach of the peace".
I can't see why it doesn't work.

[Coito ergo sum]

But if someone has merely said something that is merely "offensive", then violence should never be the response!

I'm not sure what " a breach of the peace " constitutes in every case.
It wouldn't have to be violence. There are probably lots of breaches of the peace, short of violence.

It's a grey area. If I kick your car, is that violence? Or just something likely to lead to violence ? ( forgetting the criminal damage element ).
If I say "there is no god", in a debate, that's one thing. If I shout it in church, at a funeral, that's closer to "likely to cause a breach of the peace".
I can't see why it doesn't work.

If you kick my car and do damage to it, it's destruction of property. Doesn't matter if it's "violence" or "nonviolence."

Regarding the no god line, it doesn't work because you've just indicated, by implication, that it is reasonable for people in a church to breach the peace if someone happens to say "there is no god" in their presence. It's not reasonable. The reasonable move is to ask the person to leave and if he doesn't leave, call the cops and have him arrested for trespassing. However, it's not up to the people in the pews of a church to determine what other people in the pews of a church have a right to say and not say. Saying "there is a a god" in a Church may be what sets people off, if it's the wrong god. And, in a Universalist church, saying "there is no god" is generally not a problem at all.

[MrJonno]

A lot of these laws arent really about prosecuting someone that are about granting the police the ability to remove someone from a situation that might involve other crimes developing without they themselves being prosecuted.

It can be abused but the bar for the police arresting you doesnt need to be high. Being arrested is not deemed to be a legal significant event. Being found guilty in court is

[mistermack]

Coito, I don't agree that the law has to be so specific.
If you think you're borderline, you're taking a risk. It's not for society to spell out to the nth degree how close to the line you can go.
If your solution is that all offensive behaviour is ok, because people shouldn't get offended, then that's not the real world.

I'm quite happy with a vague law, that the police, prosecutors, and jury if it comes to that have to interpret.
If you don't want to fall foul of it, don't be offensive.

I think the authorities are quite capable of filtering out cases where people are too easily offended, or too "keen" to be offended.
But if not, that's a job for a jury.

[Coito ergo sum]

A lot of these laws arent really about prosecuting someone that are about granting the police the ability to remove someone from a situation that might involve other crimes developing without they themselves being prosecuted.

It can be abused but the bar for the police arresting you doesnt need to be high. Being arrested is not deemed to be a legal significant event. Being found guilty in court is

Arrests are not a "legally significant event?" Bollocks.

What this kind of nonsense law does is "chill" free expression well beyond nasty speech. When the audience is the one that determines the propriety of speech by themselves getting out of line, then anytime an audience doesn't like what another person is saying all they have to do is get out of line. Then the police will silence the speaker instead of dealing with the unruly audience.

Thus, you and I have to govern our tongues to ensure that we don't say anything that a listener may pretend to be outraged about. Feigned outrage is not much difference than real outrage, and as we can see from the ApeLusters not all outrage is reasonable. But, an outraged ApeLuster running crying from a TAM conference complaining that she was mocked by a t-shirt and "fake jewelry" is EVIDENCE that someone was outraged. Now, we have to have the jury determine if her outrage was reasonable. So, that means that people who want to wear "I am not a Skepchick" t-shirts and make "fake jewelry" to bring to conferences are inherently in peril of being arrested, charged, and tried for a crime.

If you call that legally insignificant, I can only say that I don't think you have much of an understanding of the legal system or the real world.

[Coito ergo sum]

Coito, I don't agree that the law has to be so specific.
If you think you're borderline, you're taking a risk. It's not for society to spell out to the nth degree how close to the line you can go.
If your solution is that all offensive behaviour is ok, because people shouldn't get offended, then that's not the real world.

I'm quite happy with a vague law, that the police, prosecutors, and jury if it comes to that have to interpret.
If you don't want to fall foul of it, don't be offensive.

I think the authorities are quite capable of filtering out cases where people are too easily offended, or too "keen" to be offended.
But if not, that's a job for a jury.

The law at least has to put people on reasonable notice of what conduct is and is not proscribed, doesn't it? I mean -- if I wear an "I am not a Skepchick" t-shirt to a conference and Surly Amy runs screaming out of the conference in tears, is there a breach of the peace? Shall we let the jury decide if I've committed a crime?

It's not about whether "I" think I'm borderline. I may think I'm wholly within the real of reason, and someone else thinks it's outrageous.

My position is NOT that all offensive behavior is o.k., and certainly not "because" people shouldn't get offended. Behavior is not speech. If someone walks down the street wanking in the nude, then that is behavior that can be proscribed. If someone stands on a soapbox and champions the notion that public wanking would be a good thing to make legal, then that is NOT something that ought to be proscribed by law no matter how offended you or anyone else might be. Surely you can see the difference?

Your statement "If you don't want to fall foul of it, don't be offensive," is a ludicrous statement. Borderline retarded, actually. Do you really not understand that the law you're advocating could subject you to to punishment even if you're not being offensive. Someone else might just think you're being offensive.

And, being offensive is not against the law, is it? If it is, then be prepared to have the atheist movement shut down, because even in the UK, atheism is offensive to many reasonable people. If an atheist is on a streetcorner handing out atheism leaflets and decrying gods and masters, and that causes a breach of the peace among onlookers, are you prepared to have that speech criminalized? Or, do you just take thenaive approach that speech that you deem acceptable would never be deemed criminal?

[mistermack]

Like I said, if it's "likely" to cause a breach of the peace, it's a prosecuteable offence.

I don't see why society should hold your hand and spell out every conceiveable situation. You have to make your own judgement.
It's your own fault if you get it wrong.
So you carry the can.

[Coito ergo sum]

Like I said, if it's "likely" to cause a breach of the peace, it's a prosecuteable offence.

When it comes to speech, it is not knowable what views are "likely" to cause a breach of the peace. And, "likely" doesn't help at all anyway, because if THAT is the test then it doesn't even have to ACTUALLY cause a breach of the peace. A cop just has to think it is "likely" to cause a breach of the peace.

So, if mistermack wants to take to his soap box and holler about how the Anglican church is homophobic and and that Jesus was a gay transvestite, then a police officer can certainly conclude that that is "likely" to cause a breach of the peace.

What it means, too, is that controversial topics -- the topics that most need to be vetted by the citizenry -- can't get vetted, because the controversial topics piss people off.

In the US, a good argument could be made that gun control advocacy is 'likely" to cause a breach of the peace because gun advocates are talking about defending their rights to free speech with violence. So, arrest the gun control advocates? Why not?

I don't see why society should hold your hand and spell out every conceiveable situation. You have to make your own judgement.
It's your own fault if you get it wrong.
So you carry the can.

It's not my own fault if I am wrong in this instance. It is the fault of anyone who speaks publicly on any issue, because there is no issue of public concern that doesn't piss people off. Abortion. Who gets to speak? The pro-abortion rights advocates? Or, the pro-Life advocates? If pro-choicers demonstrate in front of Parliament looking for more abortion rights in the UK, and the pro-Lifers get enraged, can the pro-Choicers be arrested? Why or why not? Will it depend on the political view of the cop, as to whether he is pro-Life or pro-Choice? Does it matter? Is it the pro-Choicers' own fault for not knowing how much they were allowed to piss off the pro-Lifers?

What about homosexual rights advocates? If they enrage the devout Christians, ought the homosexuals be arrested? Is it their own fault that they crossed the line?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

By "not legally significant", I think Mr Jonno meant that it would not be placed on permanent, public record and should have no adverse effect on such things as job prospects, creditworthiness, suitability for certain volunteer roles, etc.

The act of arrest simply allows the police a formal platform under which to question and investigate a suspect in a case and may impose certain temporary restrictions on that suspects movements - it in no way implies guilt, or even a supposition of guilt - the latter only comes when a formal charge is made and the former when a conviction is returned by a duly appointed court.

I would have thought that would have been obvious to you, given your profession - or are things done differently across the pond?

[Jason]

Huzzah for the House Of Lords, bastion of common sense. They've got the stupid Public Order Act amended...

In a government climb down, the Public Order Act that covers speech and writing on signs and states: "A person is guilty of an offence if he uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour", will be changed to remove the word insulting. The move follows a high-profile campaign which united Christian and secular groups and was spearheaded by the comedian Rowan Atkinson, the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and the former shadow home secretary David Davis.

A student was arrested for asking of a mounted policeman "Do you know your horse is gay?" because this could have been offensive to any passing gays who might have heard him.

Theresa May is still an unmitigated ass, mind.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ja ... order-act#

That is an utterly absurd law.

[Coito ergo sum]

By "not legally significant", I think Mr Jonno meant that it would not be placed on permanent, public record and should have no adverse effect on such things as job prospects, creditworthiness, suitability for certain volunteer roles, etc.

Well, it is a public record, in that folks can find out if you're arrested. At least, it's easy to find out in the US if someone was arrested.

And, those aren't the only significant factors of an arrest. One, there is the stress of being arrested - taken in, cuffed, booked - and cited -- maybe held overnight, even. Even in Britain, sitting in a jail overnight sucks. Two, the cost and expense, and stress, associated with being prosecuted - attorneys -- loss of work time (which certainly can effect one's job). Three, the risk of loss, and having one's pro-gay marriage speech in the public square being found to be offensive to devout Christians.

The act of arrest simply allows the police a formal platform under which to question and investigate a suspect in a case and may impose certain temporary restrictions on that suspects movements - it in no way implies guilt, or even a supposition of guilt - the latter only comes when a formal charge is made and the former when a conviction is returned by a duly appointed court.

I would have thought that would have been obvious to you, given your profession - or are things done differently across the pond?

You understate, drastically, what happens when you get arrested, even on your side of the pond.

Of course the arrest is not a (legally) implication or assumption of guilt. We have the presumption of innocence here too. Heck, a formal charge is just an accusation here. But, that doesn't mean that an arrest is not a "legally significant event."

[JimC]

I was once arrested in Melbourne, during the anti-vietnam-war days, for handing out leaflets on the street urging people not to register for the draft. From memory, I think I was violating some council by-law, put in place deliberately to stymie such acts (it was a long time ago - I'm pretty certain such a law is now quashed...)

I suppose I was, in effect, urging others to break the law...