Several years ago, right-wing pastor Bill Dunfee of New Beginnings Ministries in Warsaw, Ohio, and members of his congregation began holding regular protests outside a local strip club. After years of being targeted by these protests, the club's owner, employees, and dancers began counter-protesting Dunfee's church on Sunday mornings, eventually doing so while topless.
In response, Dunfee filed a lawsuit seeking to end the protests against his church and that case has been working its way through the legal system for the last few years. Last week, radical right-wing activist Dave Daubenmire, who is a member of Dunfee's church, reported on his "Pass The Salt Live" livestream that he had attended a mediation hearing aimed at attempting to end the legal battle. No acceptable resolution could be reached and now the case is headed to court.
">argued on his program that, according to the Bill of Rights, the church is entitled to have its case heard by a jury of its peers, which means that the jury should consist entirely of conservative Christians.
"Who are your peers?" Daubenmire asked. "Most people I walk around with are not my peers. They're not my peers, and for them to stand in judgment [of me] when they do not share my values and don't understand the things of the spirit, for them to be able to do that [is unconstitutional]."
"If I'm before a jury of my peers, it's like-minded Christians who are Bible-believers and understand the importance of biblical principles in the conduct of a civil society," he argued. "Why should I, as a Christian man, go stand before a jury of unbelievers or nonbelievers or whatever? Those are not my peers."
The Sixth Amendment, of course, does not guarantee Daubenmire a right to a trial by a jury of his peers but rather "an impartial jury," which can certainly include all sorts of people who do not share Daubenmire's right-wing views and values.
