The video begins with Mark Mackey opening his Bible.

“Good morning, everyone,” he says to a group of 15 onlookers waiting outside the Hemet California Division of Motor Vehicles. “I would like to read a little bit of the word of God this morning.”

The video, shot in February of last year, ends with Mackey’s arrest.

“You can preach on your own property,” an officer from the California Highway Patrol tells Mackey as he leads him away in handcuffs. “Folks, this is what the United States is coming to,” Mackey says to the crowd, who were standing outside waiting for the DMV to open. “You can talk about anything you want, but you can’t talk about the Bible.”

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whitemice  - Not so   |2012-04-15 08:52:08 He was not arrested for reading from the bible; he was arrested for not desisting or moving when asked to do so by a security gaurd. The "this is a public place" argument has no legal merit - not all public spaces are equal. He should try this on the steps of an FBI building... This defense has been tried many times before, it is simply confrontational and nothing else. California Penal Code Section 602.1: (a) Any person who intentionally interferes with any lawful business or occupation carried on by the owner or agent of a business establishment open to the public, by obstructing or intimidating those attempting to carry on business, or their customers, and who refuses to leave the premises of the business establishment after being requested to leave by the owner or the owner’s agent, or by a peace officer acting at the request of the owner or owner’s agent, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment in a county jail for up to 90 days, or by a fine of up to four hundred dollars ($400), or by both that imprisonment and fine. In this case the "agent" is the state government, but that doesn't matter. The facility has a clear purpose and those gathered there are there for that purpose (to recieve services rendered by the DMV). He will end up paying a fine and then gets to claim he was 'persecuted' (defrauding those everywhere who actually are persecuted). He could preach in most parks, he could preach on the sidewalk (so long as it isn't adjacent to a protected facility such as a hospital, police station, post office, or military facility), he could get permission from a store owner and speak from the end of their parking lot, he could publish his views in the local paper, on the Interwebz, he could start his own low-power FM broadcast station, he could politely approach people one-on-one at the local dog park... He is *not* persecuted.

emperorbma   |2012-04-15 13:37:17 This sums up the gist I seem to have been getting from my perusals regarding this case. It seems to me like this pastor just wanted to do "lazy evangelism" by preaching to a captive audience instead of trying to preach the Gospel through love and compassion like the rest of the Christian faith has been doing since its beginning. It's an easy temptation to fall to since we like to imagine that we're the "next Paul" and can do things everyone else can't.

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