Disturbing protections

Among the many disruptions and disturbances to be found on our fine campus, some of the most memorable are the sidewalk preachers who enjoy proselytizing in the Park Blocks. As disruptive or abrasive as they may be, these preachers have every right to say what they wish to say on the South Park Blocks.

One such preacher, known lovingly as Preacher Dan, is a fairly well known fixture on the Portland State campus. He can often be seen in the afternoon outside of the Smith Student Union, on the Park Blocks side, preaching about Yashua and the tenets of Messianic Judaism.

The man is very loud—and that’s putting it gently. He is often, if not always, yelling, and may get into shouting matches with hecklers who are just as loud. He has been known to ridicule sinners and homosexuals rather vigorously.

Seeing as how all this takes place right in the center of campus, very close to Neuberger Hall and the Millar Library, one can see how Preacher Dan may be labeled as a disturbance. A disturbance he may be, but his right to disturb, even on a college campus, is fully protected by the Oregon and United States constitutions.

I recently had a chance to speak with Christopher Shortell, assistant professor of Political Science and Pre-Law advisor at Portland State, about the issue. As far as location goes, the Park Blocks qualify as a traditional public forum, wherein “speech receives the highest level of protection,” according to professor Shortell. He also went on to say that “it’s hard to think of a more public forum.”

This essentially means that Preacher Dan would have to wander into one of the unprotected areas, like fighting words or obscenity, to face any kind of recourse. Even then, the Oregon Constitution places such a high premium on freedom of speech that even some of these unprotected areas may not be covered.

In 2008, for example, the Oregon Supreme Court struck down a statute that prohibited individuals from insulting another person in a way that would be likely to elicit violent action, i.e., using fighting words. The Oregon Supreme Court has even gone so far as to rule stripping and public nudity as protected speech.

As far as obscenity goes, Preacher Dan, aka Daniel Lee, who writes in his blog about his experiences preaching, outlines an incident on April 26 wherein a number of students read aloud to him during his sermon from “porn books.” Assuming the validity of this account, and I certainly wouldn’t put it past hecklers to do such a thing, the hecklers were actually much closer to running afoul of the Constitution with their words than Daniel has been.

Any kind of attempt to stifle the speech of Preacher Dan, or anyone for that matter, would be met with hard resistance. The only kind of recourse that the university may have to mitigate the disturbance factor of street preachers must be content-neutral and not related to the speech itself. However, the park’s status as a traditional public forum would make any such restrictions very difficult to enact, according to professor Shortell.

The fact that Preacher Dan happens to be doing his yelling in close range of classrooms is unfortunate, but not any grounds for prohibiting said yelling. “[It’s] one of the consequences of being an urban university…Part of the color,” said Professor Shortell.

I may not like what Preacher Dan and others like him have to say—hell, I don’t even like most of what his misguided hecklers have to say—but I certainly like my freedom of speech, and that means guaranteeing freedom of speech for everyone, not just people saying what we want to hear.

Not to mention it can be pretty damn entertaining if you just lighten up a bit.