The disgusting protests of a small Kansas church over the past few years have provoked and angered attendees of the funerals of American service members who are understandably shaken and distressed to encounter hateful picketing during such a private moment of grieving. But as deplorable as this obnoxious behavior is, the right of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church to exercise their right to free speech must be upheld.
The Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments in the case between the Topeka, Kan., church and Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2006. Members of the church picketed outside the Marine's funeral in Maryland, just as they have protested outside many funerals of soldiers around the country. Carrying signs like "God Hates Fags," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "You're Going to Hell," members of this tiny church — which largely consists of the pastor's extended family — spew offensive, homophobic speech, arguing that the deaths of service members in Iraq and Afghanistan are God's punishment for our nation's tolerance of gay people.
Many states have in recent years enacted laws that restrict protests near funerals, and groups like the Patriot Guard Riders — motorcyclists who show up at Westboro−picketed funerals to block the protesters from view — have offered creative, uplifting solutions to the distress that church members cause mourners.
At the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, Albert Snyder's son, the seven protesters stayed within a police−designated area 1,000 feet away from the funeral service. Albert Snyder glimpsed the tips of the picketers' signs and later found an "epic" on the church's site that said he and his ex−wife "taught Matthew to defy his creator" and "raised him for the devil." He sued the church members for intentionally inflicting emotional stress; a jury ruled in Snyder's favor and awarded him $11 million in damages, which the judge reduced to $5 million. A court overturned the ruling on appeal, finding the First Amendment protected the church members' speech as they protested a matter of public concern.
The First Amendment exists to protect speech that provokes and offends. Its enshrined rights becomes, most important when applied to those whose behavior might otherwise be singled out by government censorship. The standard used by the court to determine whether the church members were liable — if the speech at their protest near the Snyder funeral was offensive or outrageous — was clearly a violation of free−speech protections afforded by the Constitution.
Supreme Court justices seemed to indicate yesterday that they sympathized with Albert Snyder but might not be able to rule in his favor. While all sensible people should be appalled at the Westboro Baptist Church members' outrageous actions, we should not support suppressing their right to express themselves — even if their methods are hurtful and wrong.
Instead, we should drown out their noisy intolerance with the extension of gay rights in America. We should ignore their hateful picketing or, when they threaten to cause emotional damage to family members of those who made the greatest sacrifice of all, we should show up in force with messages of love. For it is a sad thing when members of an extended family, young and old, devote their time to spreading bad will at every chance they get.
Yet if we abridged their right to espouse those disgusting views that tarnish the memorial of troops killed in duty, we would hand a victory to those who oppose extending freedoms to all American citizens. In fact, we would be encroaching upon the values that those same soldiers fought to uphold.
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