City of Roanoke vs. Reed Braden: Epic Victory

As I predicted, my obscenity trial today was a fucking circus.

I was contacted yesterday by the Virginia ACLU and was advised to request that City of Roanoke vs. John Reed Braden be rescheduled for a future date so that the ACLU could come represent me.

With that in mind, I took a seat in the courtroom at 11 and was asked to move to another courtroom at 12.  I did so and the new presiding judge didn’t have a nameplate on the bench.  For all I know he was a janitor.  I took my affirmation and Officer Bowman (who, now that the trial is over, is retroactively Homosecular Gaytheist’s Dumbass of the Week for the week of 11 April, for forgetting that he is a member of the Executive Branch and not a member of the Judicial Branch and it is not up to him to interpret legal definitions) told his side of the story.  I told the nameless judge that everything Bowman said was indeed true and read to him the city’s legal definition of obscene and explained why my sign didn’t fit that definition.

The judge agreed and then lectured me for ten minutes on why he doesn’t like the First Amendment.  He ended with, “You’re obviously a very intelligent young man and it disgusts me to see that this is the best way you can express yourself.  Intelligent people don’t use language like that.”

Since we had pretty much already determined that the law is on my side and his lecture was getting on my nerves, I stopped him there:  “Your Honour, I respectfully disagree with that statement.  The illustrations on the poster are re-creations of Kurt Vonnegut’s famous sketches of his own asshole that he put in several of his books, and if you are insinuating that Kurt Vonnegut is unintelligent in any way, I’m going to disagree with you wholeheartedly.  And you have already insinuated that you think I’m an asshole, and I respect your right to hold and express that opinion, but I’m fairly certain it’s not a crime in the United States to be an asshole.  That said, I would like to know the relevance of your lecture to the charges Officer Bowman brought against me.”

To which he replied, “You can take your sign and leave.”

I said, “Thank you, your Honour, have a nice day,” took my sign from the flabbergasted Officer Bowman and left.

The weird thing about this, though, is something the ACLU representative said to me on the phone:  Normally all Class 1 Misdemeanours are sent to the district court, but there’s some obscure ordinance on the books that Class 1 Misdemeanours resulting from an obscenity violation are to be sent to the circuit court.  I was sent to the district court, so the judge didn’t even technically have jurisdiction over this case.  Bring in the goddamn clowns.