>why should your group-of-two be entitled to any more free speech rights than those the two of you possessed before forming a group, and still individually possess after forming the group?
It's not? If I throw my own party I can decide to uninvite the other bad neighbor down the block who always gets drunk and trashes everything. If I form up with my other neighbor and throw a block party, we can also decide to uninvite that same drunk neighbor. Are you saying that because it's a block party and not my personal birthday party, we should be forced to invite this person and have the party trashed, because uninviting them is a person-equivalent right? Or maybe I'm not allowed to do this at a personal birthday party either, because my wife and brother and I all formed a group to plan it? Please help me understand here, maybe this is a bad analogy.
> Are you saying that because it's a block party and not my personal birthday party, we should be forced to invite this person and have the party trashed, because uninviting them is a person-equivalent right?
To use this analogy, yes.
Or perhaps better, the block party shouldn't automatically have a right to not invite them, because a block party is not a personal party, and the right of the block party to not invite them should be weighed against other rights before being granted.
Because, as you noted, equating block party group rights with your personal rights ultimately leads to "just form a group."
Which, in US law, also clashes with the fact that some core rights we give legal groups (in corporate form) to allow them to operate efficiently are limited liability (with respect to their members as individuals) and limited transparency (with regards to their internal workings and ownership).
Doesn't this infringe on my individual right to enforce my own boundaries?
If I dislike someone, and I host an event, it's by definition a "group" thing, there's no real way to distinguish a personal gathering from a group gathering. But under your proposed system, I, an individual, can't exclude any person from a group gathering. Being unable to choose who I associate with is a fundamental infringement on my right of association. If I'm forced to associate with everyone, I'm not free.
Ok, to me what you've proposed just means that nobody in my neighborhood will throw block parties anymore because they don't want to get stuck with the bill when drunk guy breaks a window and urinates on the upholstery.
Edit just to respond to something:
>Because, as you noted, equating block party group rights with your personal rights ultimately leads to "just form a group."
I don't know how you got that, this seems to be very backwards. The group was formed before the rights were even considered.
It's not? If I throw my own party I can decide to uninvite the other bad neighbor down the block who always gets drunk and trashes everything. If I form up with my other neighbor and throw a block party, we can also decide to uninvite that same drunk neighbor. Are you saying that because it's a block party and not my personal birthday party, we should be forced to invite this person and have the party trashed, because uninviting them is a person-equivalent right? Or maybe I'm not allowed to do this at a personal birthday party either, because my wife and brother and I all formed a group to plan it? Please help me understand here, maybe this is a bad analogy.