October 07
Court Bitch-Slaps Rev. Phelps
A jury on Wednesday ordered an anti-gay Kansas church to pay $2.9 million in compensatory damages to relatives of a U.S. Marine after church members cheered his death at his funeral.
The jury in federal court determined that the Westboro Baptist Church based in Topeka, and three of its principals, had invaded the privacy of the dead man’s family and inflicted emotional distress when they protested at his funeral last year.
The soldier’s death was God’s punishment on America for tolerating homosexuality, the church’s members said.
Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder died in combat in Iraq in March 2006.
Snyder’s father testified that his son was not gay, but the church targeted the military as a symbol of America’s tolerance of gays.
The Westboro Church was sued by the father, Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania. The case was the first civil suit against the church, which has demonstrated at some 300 military funerals in the past two years.
The church, which is unaffiliated to any major denomination, is headed by Rev. Fred Phelps, who has been waging a one-man war against homosexuality for years. Most members of the church belong to his extended family.
Intent: Free Publicity
Perceived Message: You need to cough up 2.9mil
(sorry if I offended anyone with the term “bitch-slap”)
Posted by: Deep Trachea in Gay for ... | Permalink
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13 Responses to “Speaking of Free Speech….”
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i got so excited when i read the article, i really hope this puts them out of business, like, their land is taken as payment.
oh. theres an update to the article as well, they actually have to pay some 11 million. its pretty damn sweet.
Lemme guess: They’re gonna appeal????
Yes, Westboro Baptist will certainly take this to a federal appeals court. As it stands now, states can impose restrictions on speech at funerals, and Congress has already restricted speech at federal cemeteries. Personally, I would love to see this thing taken to the Supreme Court. While I 100% disagree with Westboro’s belief that “God Hates Fags!” I’m certain that I don’t want to live in a country that prohibits idiots from saying it. As I’ve said over and over: there’s nothing to fear from the free flow of expression, even expression you despise, but there’s everything to fear from government-imposed restrictions on expression. Still, some forms of expression can cause imminent bodily harm to others — like yelling “Fire!” in a crowded room, or assaulting someone on the street with “fighting words.” The Supreme Court has long found these forms of expression unprotected by the Constitution. Calling someone’s kid a fag at the kid’s funeral may very well fall under the definition of “fighting words,” though I don’t think this is what Westboro Baptist did. They made a religious statement that God is taking vengeance on a sinful nation. The Old Testament is filled with similar expressions by the Prophets. It may be nonsensical blather to the rational among us, but this sort of speech is Constitutionally protected, as it should be. The Supreme Court would have quite an argument on their hands.
Though I hate Fred Phelps, I don’t like this outcome. Better to just duke it out than restrict free speech, even if that speech is abhorrent.
KEK - you start off on the right track and then veer off wildly!
You’re correct that “God hates fags” espouses a belief and can be construed as being uttered in order to state a point of view without intent to cause emotional harm. If that were all that happened, you’d be right and the court would be wrong.
But these freaks cheered at a funeral. That doesn’t make a statement of opinion any more than yelling “Fire!” in a crowded building. It’s a grotesque and highly harmful act, one that’s arguably on par with the “Fire!” analogy. You can wear sandwich boards, carry signs, and chant slogans all you want, but if you cheer and mock, I think you’ve crossed a legal line.
Biscuit, I’m well aware of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire and what it means to the issue of free speech. That’s why I mentioned the fighting words doctrine in my comment. It remains to be seen whether a noisy protest rally at a public cemetery is sufficient to “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” — especially when the protesters are hiding behind “religion” to make a hateful point. The judge in this particular case told the jurors they had to decide “whether the defendants’ actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous, and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection.” With the bar set so low, one wonders if this particular jury would convict Noel and Aaron of obscenity for publishing NEWSPEAK! What would such a ruling mean to public protest in general? That protesters dare not offend reasonable people? This whole thing reminds me of when the ACLU defended the Nazis marchers in Illinois. People thought that was “grotesque” and “highly harmful” too. But “grotesque” and “highly harmful” does not a Supreme Court case make, at least it didn’t in National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie. Personally, I would love to see what windbags like Thomas and Scalia would make of all this.
Although I would cheer at, say, the death of Donald Rumsfeld, I would certainly do so privately, perhaps with a little naked dance in my living room. There’s free speech, and there’s invasion of privacy….. the whole “your rights end where mine begin” thing, I suppose. Which “right” takes precedence here: the right of a bunch of morons to cheer at someone’s death, or the right of a family to have their privacy respected?
There just seem to be slippery slopes every where I turn, these days….speaking of which, isn’t ski season just around the corner?
And to make matters worse, nowhere is it clear what amount of privacy one is lawfully entitled to at a public cemetery. Because the “right to privacy” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, the “right” to enjoy a funeral free from the disruptions of protesters would have to be invented by the Court unless the Court merely took the stance that these disruptions constituted “fighting words,” which they might very well do. But what might the implications of such a decision be? To halt all forms of public protest that “reasonable people find offensive”? Seems like treading thin ice to me. I’m extremely cautious about these issues. Just because a stupid bigot from Kansas got the legal beat-down yesterday doesn’t necessarily make me jump for joy.
A good NPR piece this morning….
Right, KEK. Good follow-up. And that’s pretty much the other point that I later thought to tack onto my argument. If Noel and Aaron show up at Ralphie Routon’s doorstep and start shouting insults at him, or if they project an image of a topless girl-woman in a bathtub onto the side of a residence or church, they are accountable to the law. Such “speech” is not protected.
You can turn off the TV or radio. You don’t own a public road. You can read whatever you choose to. So taking to the broadcast waves, streets, or print media is fair game. But you live where you live, worship where you worship, and bury your dead wherever you made arrangements. It’s not like the soldier’s family said, “You know what? I heard there are protesters every Saturday at the cemetery on the other side of town. Let’s have him buried there.” On the contrary, it seems clear that wherever a soldier was to be buried, these people would follow. (I’ll concede that if he or his family members were “public figures” in the legal sense, the situation would perhaps be different. I think you probably can cheer at Rumsfeld’s funeral, suesun. But with our luck he’ll probably be cryogenically preserved in lieu of burial.)
You’re making your argument well, and I understand your point. I guess I just fail to see how this case isn’t clear-cut. I don’t see where the “slippery slope” is. My rights don’t feel threatened. I’m happy that the court gave this verdict, and it’s not just because I hate these Westboro asses. I think it really is the correct legal precedent to set, and moreover is consistent with other precedents. Right?? (That’s your invitation to tell me I’m wrong, because I’m finding this thread super-interesting.)
Biscuit, while Westboro Baptist obviously, and by their own admission, crossed the line of human decency and custom, the question remains: what law did they break? Why is protesting at a public cemetery an invasion of privacy, but protesting on a public sidewalk not? Because Maryland DID NOT have a cemetery protest rule in place at the time of the incident, the judge was forced to turn the case into a quasi-obscenity issue by asking the jury to decide whether or not the actions of Westboro Baptist “would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous, and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection.” If I were to sue Noel and Aaron today for damages to my psyche, and the judge, finding no law broken, asked the jury to decide the fate of NEWSPEAK! based on the above criteria, I’d easily put NEWSPEAK! out of business, especially in this town. I’m not saying there aren’t better reasons to bankrupt Westboro Baptist in court, I’m just saying that this particular ruling has the potential to set a dangerous precedent. The legal debate is far from over, as this case has the potential to go all the way to the top.
As for states that have passed protest buffer-zone laws at public cemeteries, there is probably adequate legal precedent in recent Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion clinics.
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson (Brennan, J.).
Klayton has hit most of the high points about the First Amendment arguments; although, the decisions upholding buffer zone legislation are distinguishable from the funeral legislation. In the abortion clinic context, the state has a legitimate interest in protecting a citizen’s access to medical care. That legitimate state interest does not exist in the context of the funeral legislation.
While the protests conducted by Westboro at funerals are reprehensible, they deserve the protection of the First Amendment. I can think of many situations in which protests at funerals would not be as controversial as the Westboro protests.
Now for some fun trivia: before he started hating fags, Fred Phelps was a successful civil rights lawyer in Kansas who actively worked to eliminate race discrimination. Believe it or not. . . .