[dragonwriter]

> People are really confusing a free speech issue with a first amendment issue.

No, people disagree on the meaning, scope, nature, and purpose of “free speech”, despite agreeing that “free speech” is a good thing.

It's true that the First Amendment (especially when combined with incorporation under the 14th) directly embodies a reasonably close approximation of one of the viewpoints of what free speech is all about, while simultaneously looking like a narrow special case of one of the other viewpoints.

But the nature of the disagreement here is not confusion between a principle and a legal embodiment of that principle, but a fundamental clash of beliefs about the nature of the named principle.