Our First Amendment got a major test recently, when the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s reversal of a multi-million dollar judgment against the Westboro Baptist Church. If you don’t already know, the father of a fallen Marine sued the church leaders for “intentional infliction of emotional distress, intrusion upon seclusion, and civil conspiracy” after seven church members protested his son’s military funeral. The protestors’ signs included, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Hates You.”
The Supremes sided with the church’s free speech rights in an 8-1 decision, stating, “Such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.” You really have to read the text of the decision to understand the nuances of what makes their signs protected speech.
Church leaders didn’t have absolute free reign to wave signs willy-nilly; there were restrictions in place for protests like this. They weren’t permitted to be within 1,000 feet of the funeral. They had to protest on a small public property lot. They notified local authorities that they were going to assemble and protest.
There really aren’t strong enough adjectives in the English language to describe how awful I think the church protestors are. We’ve overused terms like “horrible” and “repugnant,” as well as comparisons to Hitler. I’ll just have to add them to my Top 50 list of Worst People on the Planet.
Ever since that decision, public discussion on it has been mixed, with plenty of outraged people claiming that the justices got it completely wrong. They want the government to stop these kinds of protests because it’s easier to have them do it. Governments have guns, handcuffs, jails, cars and permission to haul these offenders out of our sight.
But that’s the lazy way out. The more difficult path is ostracism, isolation, and a strong community response.
The fallen Marine’s father who sued the protesters saw the tops of the signs, but didn’t see what was on them until the TV news coverage showed them that evening.
Part of that was due to a group called the Patriot Guard Riders, a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to show respect for fallen military personnel, and to shield mourning families from disruptive protesters. The group outnumbered the protesters, and blocked their presence with oversized American flags.
That’s a strong community response.
The local news outlets didn’t have to cover the protestors, but they did anyway. As consumers of the news, we can choose what to watch and read, and we can choose not to give them any of our attention or support. Nearly everyone thinks they are morons, and the church has no credibility in public discussions of any issue. Isolation and ostracism.
Upholding the case against the church would have set a terrible precedent; that you can’t say hurtful things if it makes someone feel bad. But not everyone feels that way.
One letter to the editor read, “We don’t have to impede the rights of others to express our opinion and exercise our freedom of speech.” However, once we start making exceptions to ban extreme behavior like this, it’s just another step towards banning the next lower level of extreme behavior.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at smoking laws. Rather than an outright ban of smoking, opponents have strategically chipped away at smokers’ rights. First, you can’t smoke inside public buildings. Then, you can’t smoke within 25 feet of the door of those buildings.
New York City is actively working to ban smoking in outdoor public places, including beaches, parks, and Times Square. Minnesota even tried to spin their 2007 smoking ban as the “Freedom to Breathe Act.”
So how does free speech work in other countries? If you’re protesting in the Libyan capital this week, you’re probably going to get shot. If you don’t die right away, they’ll come into the hospital, drag you out, and finish the job. In the Ivory Coast, a peaceful march of 5,000 women protesting election results was met by government soldiers who opened fire with machine guns, killing eight women.
That doesn’t happen in America anymore. I say anymore, because labor protests in the late 19th and early 20th centuries provide plenty of examples of violence where protesters were shot, beaten, killed, and deprived of their right to assemble.
Organized labor is dying a slow death today, and their rights are being chipped away. I think that’s because we’ve forgotten how hard people had to fight for those rights. We’ve forgotten how hard we had to fight for freedom of speech too.
The people who think that the Supreme Court was wrong in this case value convenience a little more than they value freedom. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, a society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Freedom is hard, but, it’s worth the effort.
Ryan Ryals lives in Maple Valley and writes a weekly column about politics and life in the city. Reach him at ryanryals@ymail.com.
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