By Kyle LaFleur
You may not think you know the Westboro Baptist Church, but if you’ve happened to catch any national news in the past few years the odds of that are slim. The tiny Kansas church, headed by Pastor Fred Phelps, is best known in popular culture less for its teachings of loving your neighbor as yourself, and more for its protests, which feature signs that read, among other things, “God Hates Fags,” “Thank God For 9/11” and “Pray For More Dead Soldiers.” For nearly two decades the congregation has been viciously harassing people at military funerals, gay marriage ceremonies, and even the United States Holocaust Museum.
In 2006, the Westboro gang picketed outside the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder and soon found themselves the target of a lawsuit by the Snyder family over invasion of privacy and intent to cause emotional distress. The Snyders won a $5 million settlement against the church, but in 2008 a federal appeals court reversed the verdict claiming the church was protected under the First Amendment. The bitterly disputed case of Snyder v Phelps eventually made its way to the United States Supreme Court, where last week the Justices sided almost unanimously (8-1) with Westboro.
“Speech is powerful,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in his opinion. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
The decision by the nation’s highest court was a victory for the church, members of which have voiced their pleasure in the days since. Margie Phelps, a lawyer and daughter of the Westboro minister, told the Associated Press, “We read the law. We follow the law. The only way for a different ruling is to shred the First Amendment.”
There was, however, one other clear winner in Wednesday’s ruling that had gone largely overlooked throughout the case.
Irony.
The Westboro Baptist Church protests the value system of the United States for what it believes are sins of tolerating homosexuality, the ability for citizens to seek abortions and the acceptance of other religions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and even other branches of Christianity.
The irony comes from the fact that the group found vindication in the ruling from the Supreme Court, the same institution that has upheld the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade. They also were granted their right to protest under the exact same Amendment to the Constitution that states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
The ironies don’t stop there. The Court’s decision in Snyder v Phelps ties the church to another high profile case, Hustler Magazine v Falwell, which centered around a fictitious magazine article which falsely claimed that televangelist Reverend Jerry Falwell participated in a drunken incestuous relationship. Falwell sued the pornographic magazine’s publisher Larry Flynt, alleging that the article inflicted emotional distress upon him. Although a lower court originally ruled in Falwell’s favor, the High Court, led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, ruled 8-0 that the parody was protected under the First Amendment, and that a public figure like the Reverend could not sue for damages.
With this most recent ruling, Phelps and his followers have been aligned with Flynt, who in an interview with CNN last year said of the Westboro church, “I regret that they are using my precedent-setting case with the Reverend Jerry Falwell, I think it was slightly different in one respect but in another respect it wasn’t.”
Aside from ideologically conflicting connections, the group on its own is extremely ironic. Take, for example, the fact that a church would protest the funerals of the very men and women who have fought to preserve the rights of Americans to, well, protest. It’s also ironic that the hardcore followers of a spiritual book which specifically states that the blessed people are those who act as peacemakers, would act in a way that causes anger and emotion to flare within others.
The question before the Supreme Court was never whether Westboro’s message was correct or horribly misguided, but rather whether they had the right to spread it in the fashion that they do. Picketing the funerals of your nation’s fallen troops goes against any notion of patriotism, common decency or even just what it means to be a fellow human being. In this case, the silver lining to the Court’s decision is that the same Constitution that protects the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to protest also allows any ordinary American to not only find fault with them, but to openly criticize their needless and shameful displays.