First Amendment Rights - Essay Example

The freedom of speech and expression has its downside and its negative effects include: discrimination and hatred caused due to religious freedom of expression, obscenity and biased content presented by media and protest against measures that are healthy for the overall society. One of the main reasons due to which the First Amendment was enacted was to protect the right of all religions to exercise their religion in a free manner. The issue with free exercise of religion is that religious groups preach their followers that their religion is superior to other religions and is the best religion.

This has resulted in differences among individuals representing different religions and has led to the growth of biased attitudes of followers of one religion for followers of other religion (Basford, 2003, p.386). Another issue is that, Schools and Universities that are backed by religion such as Catholic schools even have students from different religions and these educational institutes tend to promote their own religion within the educational institute as a result of freedom to exercise religious activities.

This coerces followers of one religion to follow the teachings and practices of other religion. Another issue is that while religious teachers of different religions are preaching their followers, they tend to create hatred among their followers for people of different religions. Another reason due to which the First Amendment was enacted was to protect the media from any policies that could restrict their activities and content they use. Media is considered as an important part of the American society as it educates and provides information about day to day events that are taking place within the American society.

But media has surely crossed its lines and has misused the freedom it had. Media used to be highly regulated through rules and regulations, scenes that are obscene in nature and information that is biased in nature was not allowed to be aired on media. Today, media openly provides biased information and acts as trial rooms for several issues and try to become the judge of these issues. There have been several instances where national TV channels such as CNN have aired obscenity. For example: The exposure of Jannet Jacson’s nudity on CNN which is a national TV channel (Anderson, 2004, p.1). Another important part of media is Internet and the access to internet has increased with the passage of time.

One of the most troubling realities of Internet is the pornographic material that is promoted through it. Internet is used by people of all ages and the population that has gained majority in using internet is teenagers and children. This population tends to access pornographic material which is hampering their mental development. The First Amendment right of protesting against the government for the protection of individual rights has even caused several issues. The main problem caused by this clause is that the citizens might protest the government against making rules and regulations that are beneficial for the society and the government might be held responsible for conducting discrimination if it makes decision in favor of certain part of population, while the same decision might not be in favor of others.

For example: the government is trying to use gun