Over the past several years (almost a decade now), the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has become a mantra of the woke religion. When you have to do your penance for sinning against the secular woke deity, one of the things you have to chant is “Black Lives Matter.”
“Black Lives Matter” is such a key doctrine of wokeism that any variation on it becomes blasphemy. Don’t you dare say that “All Lives Matter,” while “Blue Lives Matter” might be the highest form of blasphemy because wokes want us to defund the police, not support them.
The Wall Street Journal details how “Black Lives Matter” artwork and graffiti took over Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2020.
After George Floyd’s death in May 2020, Mayor Muriel Bowser commissioned a painting of “Black Lives Matter” to cover a street. People also plastered construction scaffolding with graffiti, murals, and photographs that included “Black Lives Matter” messages.
These protesters didn’t obtain permits for their graffiti, and none were punished for violating the defacement law.
When pro-life activists asked to write their own variation of “Black Lives Matter” in chalk, the activists ran into trouble. The WSJ continues:
So when anti-abortion groups planned a small rally to proclaim “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter,” a police officer gave them verbal permission to paint their message on the street because he believed the mayor had opened public property to political markings.
He was mistaken. When two pro-life supporters tried to chalk “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on the sidewalk, they were arrested. Pro-life groups were also denied permission at another rally to mark up the street or sidewalk. They sued the city for violating the First Amendment by selectively enforcing its defacement law based on viewpoint.
So in the eyes of the District of Columbia, it’s totally fine to create murals and even graffiti that express a woke point of view, but if you’re doing something with a pro-life theme — even in chalk, which a water hose can get rid of easily — you’re breaking the law.
Recommended: What Happens When Woke Writers and Editors Clash With Their Publisher? At Atlanta Magazine, It Wasn’t Pretty.
Fortunately, sanity and fairness prevailed in a D.C. Circuit courtroom. A panel of judges ruled 3-0 in favor of the pro-life activists.
Judge Neomi Rao wrote that, while governments have a say in how they enforce laws, “the executive cannot selectively enforce the law in a way that violates the Constitution.” In other words, the law can’t apply to one side of the political aisle and not to the other side.
“The government may not play favorites in a public forum—permitting some messages and prohibiting others,” Rao continued. It’s refreshing for a court in the headquarters of selective justice to make such a common-sense statement. It shouldn’t be revolutionary, but these days it is.
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