College Campus Preachers

There is a woman known simply, yet widely, by the name of “the blue coat lady” on campus at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Whether she lives with the feral cats in a nearby bush or in one of the huts people have constructed for the strays, she makes frequent appearances in the union plaza and has worked overtime to make such a name for herself.

Most parents are under the impression that college is a godless environment where youth frolic about doing drugs and having orgies in tiny rooms with springy mattresses and never hear God's saving name from their pastors, reverends, ministers or priests. That covers most of them anyway. Oh, how gloriously mistaken our parents are. Thanks to a number of Supreme Court cases, college is actually a haven for the most deeply zealous preachers one can encounter. And they’re after us children, shoving makeshift flyers into our hands, convincing us that an omnipotent being will love us hard if we only repent, and giving us the strong faith foundation we need while away from mum and dad. Sort of.

Blue coat lady is actually a campus favorite, although godless university students can’t say the same for crucifix-staff man; “rant to me about God, I’ll listen” man; European, man purse, “come to my Bible study” man; or the “we’ve put our children in coffins on the ground for you to see” family. But blue coat lady, who exhibits every stage of schizophrenia, has actually obtained sympathy and thus some open ears (as well as suspicion by others that a professor is conducting a long-term social experiment of sorts to test us. You never know. But what she does have in common with all the others is that they collectively disturb afternoon naps, walks across campus, and sinful lifestyles of all sorts with their fire-and-brimstone rants that inevitably turn political, racial, and very personal.

{In fact, we’re going to start a game right now that some of us use to throw these speakers off, if only slightly. Every time you hear (read) a word like one which these preachers might use (gay, sin, serpent, etc.), take note. Four in a row is a Bible Bingo, so yell it out loud. }

As a result of encounters with such people, many Americans have the same question: why the hell do we put up with this shit? Well, once we were finally free-ish of prior restraint and speech of “bad tendency” here in America, which we can agree was quite restrictive and vague, First Amendment issues concerning “hate speech” started popping up everywhere. The trend of rulings has been in favor of more rights. Take that as you will. We moved first into the “clear and present danger” test for such speech; then onto the question of to what extent speech “incited imminent action”; and finally to speech’s level of intimidation and threat of bodily harm. The result? Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and our dear Pastor Phelps of the Westboro Baptists have all been allowed to speak as, when, and where they will. From my experience with these preachers alone, I resent that … and I’m a liberal, First-Amendment-rights loving hippie. Take that as you will, as well. The reason for my frustration is that their right to free speech is interfering with my right to religion: both First Amendment issues. Screaming at me that I am a sinner and a godless whore of whom Jesus would be ashamed is creating a hostile environment for me in which to practice my lack of religion. The number of other issues to be contested are countless.

Even though there is a “clear and present danger” that a bunch of students will attack these offensive persons, “incite” violence, or feel “intimidated” and fear personal attack, since these preachers are throwing the word “monkey” around to denote ALL people of a specific race, as well as disprove evolution and condemn ALL atheists, there is no problem, considering the current rulings on hate speech. Yep, our freedom of speech is working at its best. Everything from campus codes against hate speech and marches of groups with ongoing histories of violence against other groups is fair game because stifling such speech could stifle other minority voices. The argument could go on, but I'd like to think that most people don't need much convincing on this point to reach a state of agreement. Oh, and if you haven’t said “Bingo” by now, you’re long overdue.

For a succinct, useful overview of First Amendment cases relating to hate speech, see this guy’s article:

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freespeech/tp/Hate-Speech-Cases.htm