Gil Spencer: Jail Marcavage? ACLU-gotta be kidding
Back to the Lying Lawyers Page
01/14/2005
Gil Spencer , Times Columnist
In an elevator on his way down from Courtroom 504 in the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Wednesday, a reporter is asking Michael Marcavage about his religious convictions.
The elevator is stuffed with people, and Marcavage, 25, a good-natured but determined Christian soldier, doesn’t hesitate to discuss the religious and cultural "war" in which he’s engaged. His mission is to save souls. The Bible tells him to be a "light in the darkness .. and that a "river of fire" awaits those sinners who don’t repent ..yadda, yadda, yadda. We finally reach the first floor. If anything ought to be illegal, I tell Marcavage, it’s preaching in a crowded elevator.Marcavage smiles.
For a man who faces a possible 47 years in prison, Marcavage is a pretty happy guy. Perhaps because the likelihood of him doing any jail time at all seems exceedingly small. The charges brought against him by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office (felony rioting, possession of an instrument of crime, conspiracy and ethnic intimidation) are so obviously trumped up that it will take a real miscarriage of justice to incarcerate him.
The charges stem from Marcavage showing up at a gay pride event called "Outfest" and preaching that homosexual conduct is a sin. He was joined by 10 other members of his group, Repent America, there last October.
The group’s message was not well-received by the event organizers, who sought to surround the group and drown out their leader’s biblical recitations.
City police, who were supposed to be there to make sure peace was maintained and everyone’s civil rights were upheld, instead moved against the protesters. Marcavage and the others were arrested. As they were taken away, the Outfesters, of course, cheered.
"We have a right to have a party," said Franny Price, an organizer of the event.
Yes they do. But they don’t have the "right" to be protected from the religious views of any citizen who cares to share them. Not if "Outfest" is going have its "party" in a public place, on a public street -- funded, by the way, with public dollars.
If Philadelphia’s gay community wanted to throw a party to celebrate gayness with no risk of party poopers, they should have rented a hall, with their own money, and taken it inside. There, they would be free to exclude anybody whose opinions and beliefs offended them.
But if you want to put on a public demonstration to celebrate something that a large number of people in this country still seem to think of as sinful, well, you take your chances that somebody is going to show up and tell you where they think you’ve gone wrong.
It would be nice to know where the American Civil Liberties Union comes down in all of this. I called the Philadelphia office yesterday but didn’t hear back.
But on its national Web page, the ACLU states:
"It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment ..
Uh, no it’s not. The first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment is freedom of religion. That the ACLU has now seen fit to edit the Bill of Rights to exclude it says a lot about that once-august organization.
The ACLU once had the guts to stand up for the right of Nazis to march in America. Today, in this case, the ACLU is AWOL. Doesn’t a Christian in this country have the same civil rights as a Nazi?
Even if you think Marcavage is a nut, he’s a clever nut. His case not only shows the fearful intolerance of some in the gay community, but their influence in Philadelphia to silence and even have arrested their perceived enemies.
People who truly appreciate the First Amendment understand that it can’t be selectively applied or ignored by government officials. There have to be a good number of gay men and women who disagree with serious charges levied against Marcavage and the others; gays who understand that if a religious zealot’s rights can be violated with impunity by the police and D.A.’s office, so can theirs.
They should speak up.
Wednesday afternoon, watching Marcavage and fellow defendant Mark Diener, Bibles in hand, being interviewed by the media in front of the courthouse, a well-dressed passerby offered his opinion on the matter.
"It scares me how close those guys are to the Taliban," he said.
We amicably agreed to disagree.
It was a foggy day in the city. So foggy you couldn’t see Billy Penn’s feet.
A different sort of fog seems to be clouding the minds of some would-be liberal lawyers when it comes to this prosecution.
It’ll be nice when it finally lifts.
Gil Spencer’s column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at gspencer@delcotimes.com.
