From the American Civil Liberties Union website: “The ACLU is always on guard to ensure that the First Amendment’s protections remain robust — in times of war or peace, for bloggers or the institutional press, online or off.”
4/25/24. Blogfinger headquarters on Mt. Herrmon Way. Banner was to be up for one month.
In late April, 2024, we placed a banner on our Ocean Grove home regarding our blog—Blogfinger.net. This was the start of promoting our 13th Annual Town-Wide Yard Sale in June.
We are a free Internet site which provides news, opinions, ideas, original photography and music. We have been doing this since 2009 thanks to the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
Our “free speech” is represented by nearly 5 million “hits” on our site since our founding.
And our banner represents our nation’s commitment to free speech.
Remember the “Star Spangled Banner:” … ‘o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’
On May 3 we received a threatening letter from the Neptune Township Zoning Department demanding that our banner be taken down. The letter threatened to take us to court.
They offered to cancel the citation if we submit a letter agreeing to remove the banner. We took the banner down and then I went to the Zoning Department at the Municipal Building to complain abut this miscarriage of justice.
The zoning official checked the record and told me that a policeman reported my banner to Code Enforcement who sent the complaint to zoning. The zoning officer ran it by the Township Attorney who said that I was in violation because I was “advertising a business at our home.”
This is unfair because the CMA placed a similar sized advertising banner on the boardwalk which was allowed.
The Zoning official agreed with me and my free speech concerns, and he promised to remove this accusation from my records. But the banner remained down.
Mostly I blame the Township Attorney who obviously had made no effort to verify the facts and make sure that my freedom of speech was protected. He assumed that I was running a “business.”
The big picture here is that all Americans who value the great gift of the Constitution must be vigilant and must step up when our freedoms are violated, even at the most local of small town American places…like Ocean Grove.
In Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Address to the Nation. (1/11/89) he said, “We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of enterprise.
“And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection.”
US MARINE BAND: “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
You are not entitled to free speech on Blogfinger. We have rules such as requiring factual and sensible statements. So we had to edit your comment. Try telling us your name and researching your opinions to add credibility to your comment. (Note: our “rules” section is currently down to make room for the Town-Wide Yard Sale, but I can send you a copy.)
Your opinion about at-home work is interesting. I asked the zoning official to define “business,” but he ignored that question. You could have helped our readers by finding out the facts. Maybe someone will help us out. Send to Blogfinger@verizon.net
Lawyer should have talked with-met with you before letter – warning. These days many people work-do business from their homes. Which is technically against zoning. Yet they do not get letters-warning about this.
I think (but not sure) that all of Main is zoned commercial
I miss Towne bulletin board that used to be in front of Post Office.