August 9, 2006 6:01 AM

Another DUMB@$$ AWARD wiener

Preacher Awarded Money in Lawsuit

DUMB@$$ AWARD wieners #416: Gary Don Bowman & Judge Jimm Larry Hendren

The University of Arkansas will have to pay $33,120 in attorneys fees to a preacher who sued the school over alleged free speech violations…. U.S. District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren rejected Gary Don Bowman’s request for $75,000 in attorneys fees, instead awarding him the lesser amount Wednesday…. Bowman, of Cherokee County, Okla., sued the university in October 2003, saying the school policy of allowing him only five days to preach on campus was illegal…. While on campus, Bowman preached outside the Student Union. Witnesses in a trial on his lawsuit said Bowman had called students “sluts,” “whores,” and “fags” and told them they were going to hell because they participated in fraternities and sororities.

There is stupid, and there is just flat-out, brain-dead, sheer DUMB@$$ stoopid, in which all semblance of reason and common sense is scattered to the four winds, and our legal system is revealed as the complete and total freak show it too often is. Don’t get me wrong, I understand there’s a free speech issue involved here, but since when does a publicly-funded educational institution have to deal with the expectation that it allow a foul-mouthed, pseudo-Christian troglodyte unfettered access to its campus? If a “preacher” (if Gary Don Bowman can even accurately be called that) feels that he has the perfect right to scream invective at anyone and everyone in the name of God, something is terribly, horribly wrong.

Making matters worse is the US District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren agreed with Bowman and awarded him monetary damages. So the message here is that ANY sort of free speech, even invective and insults screamed at passersby at the top of one’s lungs, trumps common decency in the public square? A self-righteous ignoramus can shout hellfire and damnation at anyone within earshot? Have we lost our collective mind?

I certainly understand the reality that free speech is very often offensive speech. Nonetheless,free speech is not necessarily unfettered, no-holds-barred, in-your-face speech. College students, and indeed anyone in a public area, should be able to go about their business without someone preaching high-decible hellfire and brimstone at them. That Judge JIm Bob Jimm Larry Hendren ruled that Cletus Gary Don Bowman’s right to shout his religious intolerance and bigotry at anyone and everyone only means that Hendren is as much of a DUMB@$$ as Bowman.

When Dickens wrote the immortal line, “The law is an ass”, he had NO idea how spot-on he actually was. Once comment I read today pretty much sums up my feelings:

I hope the preacher has a paralyzing stroke and, while lying in ICU, conscious but unable to move, he is brutally sodomized by the night orderlies. The judge should immersed in feces until he gulps, then hosed off with steaming hot animal urine.

Tough to argue with that one….

It’s no wonder Arkansas ranks 50th in just about every measurable metric, eh? Sometimes I think we should just build a fence around it and let the natives fend for themselves….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on August 9, 2006 6:01 AM.

Can YOU spot the moran...er, moron? was the previous entry in this blog.

It's called "Separation of Church and State" for a reason, no? is the next entry in this blog.

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