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Flowers, Panhandlers And Prostitute

May 30, 2016
by Caroline Miller
A Fight over Petunia Look-alikes, Brother we can ask you to spare a dime, Candy Bouquet, Don Norton, First Amendment rights. free speech, Greg Stohr, Mark Weinberg, Marvin Miller, Matthew Townsend, petunias, Susan Decker, Tim Jones
5 Comments

Flowers and other plants would seem to be a part of nature.  But not so, if it’s a petunia called Candy Bouquet and sold in garden shops.  This flower, magenta and yellow, was bred in Germany by growers who manipulated the pollen to create a new color combination. Is the new design nature’s work, or can it be patented as being of human origin? The answer is  important, says Marvin Miller, a market researcher.  People are doing less gardening than before, so competition for remaining customers is fierce. (“A Fight over Petunia Look-alikes,” by Susan Decker and Matthew Townsend, Bloomberg Businessweek, May 10-22, 2016,pg. 32.)  Now the courts will have to decide when a flower is a flower.

We humans are good at painting ourselves into definitional corners.  In 1890, a corporation was a business.  Today, a corporation is a person, endowed with an inalienable right to free speech.  Fair enough.  We’re struggling to live with that, though it goes against common sense.  The question that follows is, “How do we define ‘free speech’?” The query becomes more pressing as cities pass ordinances that could be construed as limiting speech.  One of the hot button debates is about panhandling.

panhandling

Courtesy of www.torontosun.com

In 2013, Don Norton and his wife, Karen, tired of being arrested for begging in Springfield, Illinois, found an attorney willing to argue that begging was protected under the First Amendment.   The attorney won his case.  Frank Easterbrook, federal appeals court judge, sums the ruling up this way:  “Any law distinguishing one kind of speech from another by reference to its meaning now requires a compelling justification.” (“Brother, We Can Ask You to Spare a Dime,” by Tim Jones and Greg Stohr, Bloomberg Businessweek, May 10-22, 2016, pg. 39.)

Restaurant owners, trying to protect customers  as they dine al fresco, don’t call panhandling a First Amendment right.  They call it harassment, a punishable crime. (Ibid, pg. 39.)  Mark Weinberg, the attorney for Norton and his wife thinks otherwise.  “There is no compelling economic interest that justifies squelching free speech.  (Ibid pg. 39.)  Girl Scouts, who sell cookies on the street, would be obliged to agree with him.

For the moment, panhandling is protected under the First Amendment.   I’m waiting to see what happens in cities across the nation when prostitutes begin standing on street corners, carrying a sign that reads,  ‘Honey, can you spare a cuddle?”

 

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5 Comments
  1. MaryBeth Kelly May 30, 2016 at 11:48 am Reply
    That punch line gave me a good giggle, but it also makes a more an good approach. Excellent, as usual, Caroline.
  2. MaryBeth Kelly May 30, 2016 at 11:50 am Reply
    Correction: "...makes a more than good approach." I hit the post button too soon.
    • Caroline Miller May 30, 2016 at 3:45 pm Reply
      Your typing is as good as mine, MaryBeth. Nonetheless, your comment is apprecaiated.
  3. John Briggs May 30, 2016 at 8:09 pm Reply
    See Shakespeare's Winter's Tale IV.iv.1-440 for a suggestive take on the meaning of the hybridization of flowers. That section might be the most important part of the play, with repercussions for its presentation of human nature as well as nature. Is hybridization the perfection or corruption of nature? Shakespeare offers a third way of understanding the question.
    • Caroline Miller May 31, 2016 at 8:09 am Reply
      "So over that art which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes." I do hope the judges remember their Shakespeare.

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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