This morning the Supreme Court ruled that Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist “God Hates Fags” cult have a First Amendment right to protest at funerals, as long as they stay in legally designated areas and are quiet and nonviolent. Westboro had picketed the funeral of a soldier, Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq. Snyder’s father then sued Westboro for damages and was awarded $2.1 million. The Supreme Court overturned the verdict.
As loathsome and despicable as the Westboro folks are, I agree with the Court on this. I tend to take a pretty strong position on the freedom of speech.
Surprisingly, the decision of the Court was not unanimous. One justice dissented: Justice Alito. He argues that Westboro was properly liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
At first I thought, wow, Alito and I have something in common: we both hate Westboro! At least Alito’s heart is in the right place!
But, no. This paragraph from his dissent really pisses me off:
Other signs would most naturally have been understood as suggesting—falsely—that Matthew was gay. Homosexuality was the theme of many of the signs. There were signs reading “God Hates Fags,†“Semper Fi Fags,†“Fags Doom Nations,†and “Fag Troops.†[…] Another placard depicted two men engaging in anal intercourse. A reasonable bystander seeing those signs would have likely concluded that they were meant to suggest that the deceased was a homosexual.
Oh, heaven forbid that it should be implied that someone is gay, even falsely! What a horrible defamation.
A few paragraphs later, we see this:
In light of this evidence, it is abundantly clear that respondents, going far beyond commentary on matters of public concern, specifically attacked Matthew Snyder because (1) he was a Catholic and (2) he was a member of the United States military. … While commentary on the Catholic Church or the United States military constitutes speech on matters of public concern, speech regarding Matthew Snyder’s purely private conduct does not.
I wonder if that’s the real reason Alito was so bothered by Westboro — because of their anti-Catholic bias? There are six Catholics on the Supreme Court, and five of them didn’t let this get to them. Only Alito, who can’t seem to control himself at a State of the Union Address, took it so personally that it warped his judgment of the First Amendment.
When I first saw that the decision was 8-1 (and I also agree with the decision, similarly being a very hard line on first amendment issues, I just assumed, for some reason, that it was likely Thomas who dissented. I was stunned when I saw it was Alito, as while I disagree with him on most everything else, in the past he’s seemed to take a hard line on free speech.
I hadn’t read his dissent, but at lunch I mused to (my) Jeff that I wondered if Alito’s notable homophobia came into play, if the false intimations that Snyder were gay might influence Alito’s position that Westboro’s actions were so heinous that they could not be considered protected speech. Your quotes suggest that in fact it may have played at least some part.
I couldn’t agree with you more on Alito and his notion that calling someone gay is defamatory. . When I read the opinion yesterday, I was taken aback by the picture Alito paints of a grieving father distressed by the horrible notion that someone thought his son might have been a fag. And one has to wonder whether Alito would have reached the same result had the case involved Westboro’s picketing of the funeral of an Aids victim.
Harassment by religious extremist
Jehovah’s Witnesses instigated court decisions in 1942 which involved cursing a police officer calling him a fascist and to get in your face at the door steps,….this same JW 1942 court decision upheld infamous Phelps hate church in 2011
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Danny Haszard
I have long been irritated that the nation as a whole only started to publicly condemn WBC once they started targetting the funerals of presumably heterosexual soldiers and Marines, as if doing so to Matthew Shepard and other homosexual civilians was fair game.
Fred Clark on Slacktivist made a very interesting point on how this ruling upholds the free speech rights of anti-gay bigots. One of the most obnoxious arguments against same-sex marriage or sexual orientation non-discrimination laws is that it will criminalize conservative Christian clergy who preach about the evils of homosexuality in their churches. Phelps v. Snyder clearly upholds the right to make the most offensive and disgusting anti-gay statements in public, so a fortiori the right to make disgusting anti-gay statements in private areas like churches should be even more secure. Anti-gay bigots should be consoled by this, but I really doubt this will make them rethink their arguments.