{"id":1902,"date":"2023-03-13T10:37:05","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T15:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=1902"},"modified":"2023-03-13T10:37:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T15:37:06","slug":"now-parents-texting-own-kids-to-do-chores-could-go-to-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/?p=1902","title":{"rendered":"Now parents texting own kids to do chores could go to jail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8216;Government must not be given the power to criminalize speech it deems distasteful or annoying&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20370%20247'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" class=\"zeen-lazy-load-base zeen-lazy-load\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.wnd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/children-baby-babies-boys-toddlers-cellphones-smartphones-iphones-texting-annoyed-transgenders-disbelief-incredulous-pixabay.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wnd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/children-baby-babies-boys-toddlers-cellphones-smartphones-iphones-texting-annoyed-transgenders-disbelief-incredulous-pixabay.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/noscript><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong>(Image by\u00a0<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/ua_bob_dmyt_ua-8820017\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=5873385\" target=\"_blank\">Bob Dmyt<\/a><strong>\u00a0from\u00a0<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=5873385\" target=\"_blank\">Pixabay<\/a><strong>)<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>A civil and religious rights organization has issued a warning to the public about a new precedent for &#8220;harassment,&#8221; a precedent under which a parent repeatedly texting a child over undone chores could end up in jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The warning comes from the Rutherford Institute and results from the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to address a Texas law regarding electronic harassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The government must not be given the power to criminalize speech it deems distasteful or annoying,\u201d said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. &#8220;Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense or hurting someone\u2019s feelings, protect government officials from criticism, discourage bullying, penalize hateful ideas, combat prejudice and intolerance, and the like.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Texas law has been described as &#8220;so vague and overreaching as to make it illegal for a parent to repeatedly text a teen child about neglected chores.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TRENDING:<\/strong>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnd.com\/2023\/03\/despite-supreme-rulings-satanists-atheists-ferociously-pounce-ten-commandments\/\">Despite Supreme rulings, satanists and atheists ferociously pounce on Ten Commandments<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under the law, an offender can be punished by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine for a first offense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Supreme Court refused to hear arguments in the case Barton and Sanders v. Texas, meaning that it gave a pass to Texas&#8217; plans to &#8220;criminalize protected speech.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rutherford said its lawyers &#8220;have repeatedly warned that laws criminalizing speech construed as annoying, embarrassing, or offensive could have a severe chilling effect on no-threatening speech which is protected under the First Amendment, including political speech criticizing government officials and elected representatives.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>WND is now on Trump&#8217;s Truth Social!\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@WNDNews\" target=\"_blank\">Follow us @WNDNews<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The state&#8217;s new law, Penal Code section 42.07(a)(7), provides that &#8220;a person is guilty of a criminal offense simply for sending multiple electronic communications with an intent and in a manner likely to &#8216;harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another.'&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rutherford lawyers said they earlier had challenged the law in defending a man who was charged for emailing a sheriff\u2019s office to criticize its alleged inattention to his requests for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The organization reported, &#8220;In Barton and Sanders v. Texas, Charles Barton and Nathan Sanders were each charged in separate cases with violating Texas\u2019s electronic harassment statute. Barton was charged with nine violations for sending texts and emails to his ex-wife. Both defendants challenged the statute as being unconstitutional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The trial courts denied the challenge, but the intermediate court of appeals for Barton\u2019s case in the Second District of Texas unanimously found the statute to be unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, and noted Barton\u2019s argument that a parent\u2019s repeated text messages to their teenage child to mow the lawn could constitute a violation.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The institute noted, however, that the Court of Appeals in the Seventh District of Texas came to the opposite conclusion and affirmed the trial court\u2019s decision in Sanders\u2019s case. Subsequently, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that the statute is constitutional in a 5-4 decision. Noting that &#8216;the statute encompasses a vast amount of speech that is protected by the First Amendment,&#8217; a dissenting judge wrote: &#8216;At the risk of being prosecuted myself for violating \u00a7 42.07(a)(7) of the Texas Penal Code, let me say here that the people of Texas should be alarmed by this holding.'&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rutherford&#8217;s lawyer had urged the Supreme Court to review the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Long the world\u2019s most Christian nation, America today is being taken over by a new \u201cofficial\u201d national religion, one being imposed on the entire populace by every major societal institution, from government, media and big tech, to academia, entertainment and business.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This new state religion is Wokeism. \u201cGoing woke\u201d conjures up visions of someone claiming to be acutely sensitive (\u201cawake\u201d) to \u201csystemic social and political injustice.\u201d And not just alleged bigotry against blacks, but toward every other \u201cminority\u201d as well, from LGBT folk \u2013 especially everything transgender and \u201cnonbinary\u201d \u2013 to \u201cundocumented immigrants.\u201d All of them, being VICTIMS, intrinsically more virtuous than the shameful oppressor class: primarily heterosexual white males.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This new \u201cwoke\u201d consciousness has turned America upside-down \u2013 from the nationwide Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, to tearing down of historic monuments, to demanding multi-million-dollar reparation payments for blacks, to appointing transgenders as top government officials, to rampant reverse discrimination in every area of life, to the U.S. military imposing mandatory \u201cdiversity training\u201d and transgender pronoun use on all personnel, causing recruitment to disastrously plummet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Yet there is hope. Being \u201csaved\u201d \u2013 which in Wokeism is called being \u201cwoke\u201d \u2013 is largely a matter of worshipping victimhood by becoming an \u201cally\u201d and \u201cdefender\u201d of all the many victim classes, and a determined enemy of the straight white male oppressor class. Thus, \u201cjoining the righteous\u201d as an ally \u2013 even if one is cursed to be a straight white male \u2013 opens the door mercifully for salvation, even to the most wretched.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>That is the power of the religion of Wokeism. And it\u2019s explored as never before in the February 2023 issue of WND\u2019s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine. If you\u2019ve ever wondered, for example, exactly how the most radical elements in American society are successfully pressuring the biggest corporations into adopting the most outrageous and immoral policies imaginable, even when doing so permanently damages and devalues the company, the stunning answers are in this issue of Whistleblower, titled&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/superstore.wnd.com\/whistleblower\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>\u201cWOKEISM: AMERICA\u2019S OFFICIAL STATE RELIGION.\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>For 25 years, WND has boldly brought you the news that really matters. If you appreciate our Christian journalists and their uniquely truthful reporting and analysis,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnd.com\/join\/?adm_source=header-m\">please help us by becoming a WND Insider!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:licensing@wndnewscenter.org\">licensing@wndnewscenter.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Original Article: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnd.com\/2023\/03\/now-parents-texting-kids-chores-go-jail\/\">https:\/\/www.wnd.com\/2023\/03\/now-parents-texting-kids-chores-go-jail\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Government must not be given the power to criminalize speech it deems distasteful or annoying&#8217; A civil and religious rights organization has issued a warning to the public about a new precedent for &#8220;harassment,&#8221; a precedent under which a parent repeatedly texting a child over undone chores could end up in jail. The warning comes from the Rutherford Institute and results from the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to address a Texas law regarding electronic harassment. &#8220;The government [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1903,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions\/1903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedpolitics.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}