Eugene Ramirez says a thumbs-down and boos directed at the president prompted security to escort him out of his seat and hold him.

A gay journalist says he was briefly detained by security after he booed President Donald Trump during the opening night of the musical Chicago at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    241·
    11 hours ago

    It doesn’t matter, he was prevented by officials from expressing his opinion. That means his freedom of speech was oppressed.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      7 hours ago

      That means his freedom of speech was oppressed.

      • You don’t understand what the Kennedy Center is, do you?
      • “By officials” in this case means by the Kennedy Center’s security, which are not agents of the US government.
      • Again, though, even if the Kennedy Center weren’t a public–private partnership, I can’t just walk into a federal building and start making a disturbance expecting not to get kicked out. (Or in this case, just pulled aside for a few minutes before the play started and almost certainly given the option to wait or leave the venue.)

      “His freedom of speech was oppressed” in functionally the same sense that it is if I get banned from a social media platform or kicked out of a library for making a disturbance. It’s not even remotely a First Amendment issue, and him citing the 1A is bonkers.

      I think in another life you’d be supporting those obnoxious, far-right “First Amendment auditors” who walk into e.g. a library or USPS building, start making a scene, and think that being kicked out means their constitutional rights have been impinged. Not because you have ill intent but because you fundamentally do not understand what the 1A does or is supposed to do.

      • JoeMontayna@lemmy.ml
        4·
        6 hours ago

        it really depends on the context in which he was booing. Reading the article, in this context he did nothing wrong. If you can cheer, you can boo. He was not causing a disturbance.

        • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          6 hours ago

          If you can cheer, you can boo.

          Sure, and that’s a fine opinion to have. I disagree they need to be treated the same way, yet I support his booing regardless of the consequences, and if it were up to me, Trump would be barred from the venue anyway and no booing would happen (not that he functionally could be right now as chairman).

          It doesn’t make what happened to him even remotely a constitutional issue. This isn’t even a little ambiguous; you’d just have to entirely not understand or willfully, grossly misinterpret the 1A to drag it into this.