Jesus With a Bullhorn?
Arrested Anti-Gay Protester Says Bible Being Called Hate Speech
By DEAN SCHABNER
Feb. 17, 2005 --
Michael Marcavage says all he was doing last fall at OutFest, a gay and lesbian event in Philadelphia, was quoting from the Bible and telling sinners to repent. But that's not the way police saw it.
Marcavage, who runs the Repent America Web site from his Lansdowne, Pa., home, was arrested along with 10 others at the event on Oct. 10. He was charged with three felonies, including ethnic intimidation, which is Pennsylvania's hate crime statute, and riot and criminal conspiracy.
"We're not attacking homosexuals," Marcavage said. "We're going to them to give them hope. Our motive is in love, not in hate. We don't desire these people to perish, and neither does God."
A Philadelphia judge ruled that whatever Marcavage and his supporters were doing at OutFest, it was not a crime. After watching a videotape of the event, she threw out the charges at a hearing today on the case.
"We are one of the very few countries that protect unpopular speech," Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe said.
Fanny Price, the assistant to the director of Philly Pride Presents, which organizes OutFest and other events, said Marcavage's way of expressing his message seemed confrontational.
"He came with a camera guy. He had a microphone attached to him. He came to cause trouble," Price said. "Nobody's going to come up to him and say 'Yes, I want to repent.' Jesus would not have come with a bullhorn."
Marcavage, 25, said there are 5,000 people nationwide on his mailing list, and there are a dozen people in the Philadelphia area who often accompany him to events.
Of the others arrested with Marcavage, charges had previously been dropped against all but three adults and one teenager. Dembe dismissed all the remain charges today.
According to the police report on the incident, Marcavage and the Repent America supporters came to the OutFest event with signs and bullhorns and began "preaching anti-gay/lesbian messages."
"As soon as the group entered the area they caused a crowd in excess of 100 persons who were insulted by their preaching and actions," said the report filed by Philadelphia Police Department Chief Inspector James Tiano.
Police had to order the group to move away from where they were blocking pedestrian traffic four times before they finally did start to move, according to the report. But when they did go, Marcavage and the others moved in the opposite direction from that indicated by the police, the report said.
"They told us to move, but we didn't want to move in the way they told us," Marcavage said. "They wanted us to move to where we would be outside the event."
By that time, the crowd gathered around Marcavage was already more than 500 people, and "had to be restrained by uniformed and plainclothes police to ensure the safety of the protesters," the report said.
Many in the crowd were shouting obscenities back at Marcavage and his supporters, Price said, adding she believes that the confrontation was exactly what the Repent America demonstrators wanted.
"If they were standing on the corner with a sign, most of us would just ignore it, but that's not what they were doing," she said. "They were right up in people's faces."
When police told Marcavage he was going to be arrested, he lay down in the street, the report said.
"Mr. Marcavage's conduct is to try to incite a crowd to cause a public disturbance," Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Charles Ehrlich said at hearing last month on Marcavage's challenge of a condition that had been placed on his bail, requiring him to remain 100 feet from any "homosexual event."
Dembe had rescinded the bail condition, saying, "We cannot restrict people's right to speak or to be near those who might not wish to hear them into the future."
About Words or Deeds?
The 22-minute videotape of the demonstration shown at the hearing also did not seem to impress her that Marcavage was dangerous.
"It all amounted to annoyance on both sides, but it did not amount to criminal behavior that I can see," she said.
Before the charges were dismissed, Cathie Abookire, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, declined to discuss the specifics of the case, but said it was being pursued because Marcavage and his supporters had created a threat to public safety.
"The issue for the district attorney's office is conduct, not speech, and public safety," she said. "We agree anyone has a right to protest, that people have the right to free speech, to say what they want, even if it is unpleasant to others. The issue here is specific conduct that jeopardized public safety."
According to the law, a person commits ethnic intimidation if they commit another crime "with malicious intention toward the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity of another individual or group of individuals."
But Marcavage's lawyer, Scott Shields, said he believes the case is about speech, and that as far as he could discover it is the first time anyone has been prosecuted for "preaching from the Bible."
Legal scholars seem to agree, but some say that there is nothing to prevent scripture from any faith to be considered hate speech, depending on how it is used.
"You have to look at the context," said Derek Davis, a professor and director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. "The fact that a quotation comes from the Bible or the Koran doesn't insulate things from being hate speech. Some of the things, given the right context, can be extremely inflammatory, and even hate speech."
Even when spoken by "well-meaning people who are expressing their faith," calls to repent or accept faith have to be counterbalanced by concern for whether any harm is inflicted on anyone, he said.
'A Strong Rebuke'
Marcavage said he does not go to events like OutFest to spout hatred at the people there, and his rhetoric is not as strong as that of some other conservative Christian street preachers, such as the Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan. According to an open letter to the people of Topeka explaining his mission, Phelps has been arrested and prosecuted "hundreds of times" for "opposing the filth of homosexuality."
But Marcavage also admitted that he finds events like OutFest disturbing, and sometimes offensive.
"We see this as a celebration of sin in the public streets of Philadelphia," he said. "The public celebration of sin warrants a strong rebuke. These are people who take pride in their sin, a sin that God has called abomination."
The incident in October was not the first time Marcavage has been arrested for his activities and a some of his critics have referred to him as a "professional Christian," and that his real issue is not the teachings of Christ but hatred of homosexuals.
"It's the up-in-your face tactics that get you," Price said. "If it's not your religion, all you see is the hatred."