Fuck No Greg Fultz

Email from the City (Received 05/17/2011)

I wrote to the city on the 16th regarding this billboard and this was their reply.  I have the original and would happily forward it to the Tumblr Page Owner for clarification if required.

Here it is:-

Mr McGregor,

It was good to hear from you. The City Manager asked me to respond to
your questions/concerns.

While I understand your questions/concerns about the billboard in
question, there is a very salient point you have overlooked. The 1st
Amendment to the United States Constitution specifically allows for
freedom of speech. Our courts have ruled that as this applies to
governments at any level (federal, state, county, or municipal), we
CANNOT discriminate among types of speech or messages. In other words,
the City does have an ability to regulate the placement of billboards
within the community (although we have not elected to exercise that
authority). But once the billboard is in place, we have no ability to
regulate the message on that billboard, other than prevent it from
creating a hazard (for instance, a billboard with a gigantic STOP sign
on it might be subject to our regulation if it was determined that it
created a traffic hazard). In the case you have cited, any efforts on
the City’s part to take down the sign could easily be met with a
lawsuit, which the City would lose. Period.

The City would also have the right to take action against an “obscene”
billboard. However, the definition of obscene in this case would involve
the use of words that are outside of “prevailing community standards.” I
suspect you and I could both come up with a list of such words. However,
those lists actually tend to be quite short, and fairly specific. The
late US comedian George Carlin had a routine in which he discussed the
“Seven Words You Cannot Say on Television.” That pretty well defines the
list of publicly “obscene” words in the US. I cannot find any of those
words on this sign (and I have looked).

US law does not, and cannot, prevent “offensive speech.” The Supreme
Court of the United States recently ruled once again on this question in
the Phelps case, which allowed members of a fundamentalist Christian
Church to protest at the funerals of US sevice personnel with signs such
as “God Hates Fags” (even when the service person in question was
unknown to the church members and was not know to be homosexual). “Hate
speech” laws such as exist in the UK and the EU are generally not
supported in US law because of the 1st Amendent I referred to
previously.

The one recourse that might exist in this case would be for the woman
in this matter to sue the man for defamation of character. I’m not an
attorney (solicitor/barrister) so my opinion on the merits of such an
action would be worth every penny you paid for it

Was it Chatham who pointed out that the law forbids both Kings and
commoners from sleeping under bridges? This is rather a corollary to
that statement: the law forbids state interference in statements both
profound and offensive.

If there is anything else you would like to discuss in connection with
this, please feel free to write. I suspect this isn’t the answer that
you wanted, but it’s the only one I can give.

Trusting that this finds you well in Edinburgh.

Marc A South
City Planner
City of Alamogordo, NM