When you don’t have any constitutional protections for free expression nor against government sponsorship of religion, this is what you get when the government has spent $86 million of taxpayer dough for a sectarian shindig- and doesn’t want to be embarrassed:
Thou shalt not annoy on Youth Day
Jano Gibson, Linda Morris and Joel Gibson
July 1, 2008EXTRAORDINARY new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.
The laws, which operate until the end of July, have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music, critics say.
Police and volunteers from the State Emergency Service and Rural Fire Service will be able to direct people to cease engaging in conduct that “causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event”.
People who fail to comply will be subject to a $5500 fine.
The president of the NSW Bar Association, Anna Katzmann, SC, described the regulations as “unnecessary and repugnant”.
The Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said if someone exposed themselves in public, they faced a fine of only $1100 or six months’ jail under the Summary Offences Act.
“So if someone flashes a WYD participant they will face a $1100 penalty but if they wear an anti-Catholic T-shirt they could face a $5500 penalty,” she said. […]
Alan Jones can demonise Muslims at will- which surely causes them annoyance and inconvenience. Will there be a $5500 penalty the next time the Parrot ‘leads this charge‘? Not bloody likely.
Just because cathlicks are obligated to believe that their ex-nazi, 
paedophilia-concealing pope is infallible doesn’t mean I’m under the same constraint. Here we have a gang of sexist and homophobic idiots who condemn thousands of their own members to a slow, lingering death from HIV because- get this- they say that god hates condoms (it’s in the Bible, you know). This regressive teaching is infinitely worse than parents who think vaccination is some sort of evil conspiracy and whose children go on to become a public health hazard through their susceptibility to and carriage through the community of easily preventable diseases. According to John Watkins, this anti-community practise isn’t deserving of free public comment nor protest.
That’s but one valid critique of the cathlicks and how their dark-ages preachings affect people who wouldn’t set foot in a church in a million years… but their rights to free expression and rights to move freely through Australia presently exceed my own.
Bullshit!
-weez
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