However, even if one concedes that the property should belong to the ‘public’, the city employees have the current stewardship over that property. Ayn Rand wrote an extremely inciteful article in her book entitled ‘Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal’ called ‘The Cashing In: The Student Rebellion’ in which she explains that even though every member of ‘the public’ supposedly ‘owns’ public property (which was the University of California at Berkeley in this article), that the Administration had stewardship over that property and was responsible for what goes on in it. Therefore, it could be argued that the steward of the public property should have control over the use of it.

Another thing to think about is that not providing a forum for the exercise of 1st Amendment Free-Speech rights is not the same as censorship. Censorship can only happen when the individual or group has the right to control the property which they want to use and the government stops them from doing so.

It becomes a very sticky situation when you get into the realm of public property, unfortunately and there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue, I think.