[This post is dedicated to Jerry Remmers. I wonder how Jerry, as a journalist and a person with great empathy, would have come down on this issue. He may have already]
Almost a year ago, just as the Snyder v. Phelps case was starting to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, I had strong opinions about this issue.
On April 1, 2010, I wrote:
Imagine your only son is killed in Iraq or in Afghanistan while serving his country.
Imagine the day arrives for your son’s funeral and family and friends are somberly gathered for the services.
Imagine a group of people appearing at your son’s funeral carrying signs proclaiming “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “America is Doomed,” “Fag Troops,” “You’re Going to Hell,” “God Hates You,” “Semper Fi Fags,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” and “Thank God for IEDs,” the latter a reference to the roadside bombs that have killed so many of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Imagine the shock, the pain, the stress, the outrage.
I wrote about the particularly vile desecration of the funeral of U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder who died in Iraq on March 3, 2006.
After affirming that “the First Amendment is one of our most cherished and inviolable constitutional rights,” I concluded:
It remains to be seen whether the rights claimed by the Phelps group trump the rights of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters to mourn the loss of their loved ones with dignity. The right to grieve and pay their last respects to their departed heroes in privacy. The right to entrust their loved ones to their God with honor and without being stripped of their final memories. The right to look for closure without being subjected to the most obscene and cruel “intentional infliction of pain and emotional distress.”
What is so diabolically ironic is that the free speech rights Phelps and his flock hide behind have been paid for dearly by the very same military whose deaths and funerals they are so despicably mocking and violating.
When the Snyder v. Phelps case finally arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court last fall, I once again expressed my strong opinion and the reasons why I felt that way.
I once again affirmed the “preciousness” of our First Amendment rights and, once again asserted that “all Americans, including Rev. Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church, have the right to free, irreverent, even hateful speech,” a right that many of us—including Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder—have served to protect. (Ironically Snyder died doing exactly that.)
I once again explained why I held such opinions and mentioned that our rights also carry obligations and responsibilities. I mentioned that most reasonable people do not believe that our free speech rights are diminished or infringed upon when those who misuse them to maliciously and falsely defame others, to publish child pornography and other obscenity, or to falsely yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, are held legally responsible for such abuses and that using free speech to intentionally and maliciously inflict pain, harm and emotional distress on others, should also have legal consequences.
In this particular case—Cpl. Snyder’s funeral—I said, the right to grieve and to pay our last respects to our departed loved ones with dignity and in privacy; the right to entrust our loved ones to God with honor and without being emotionally assaulted and vilely stripped of our final memories, must be respected and protected.
And I concluded:
Let’s hope that the Supreme Court does exactly that. If it does so, in my opinion, it will not be an “erosion” of our First Amendment rights nor will it have a “chilling effect” on news reporting. Neither will it represent a slide on that much-allegorized “slippery slope” towards limiting free speech. Rather it will be an affirmation of our Justice system—a system where individuals are free to do outrageous things, but must be willing to bear the consequences, must be willing to face a jury of their peers.
Well, here we are in March 2011. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court made its decision, and I wrote once again standing by and explaining my convictions:
Well, today the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed with me and with millions of Americans and ruled that the First Amendment protects fundamentalist church members who mount attention-getting, anti-gay protests outside military funerals.
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I respectfully disagree, but I also respectfully accept the decision in hopes that it will not open the floodgates to similar misuses of our First Amendment.
Why am I restating all this again?
First, to say that I respect all those who agreed or disagreed with me on this issue. After being on the “wrong side” of an 8 to 1 Supreme Court decision (someone called it a “no-brainer”) it would be a futile effort to try to change anyone’s mind.
Second, to say that, in my honest opinion, in America, a person can disagree with a law, with a Supreme Court decision, even with the Constitution and still be morally or ethically right and be eventually proven “legally” right. Just consider how many Amendments we have to our Constitution. Most of those Amendments are the result of people who at one time or another in our country’s history strongly disagreed with either what was originally written in the Constitution or who wanted to make right what was wrong because of omission.
Finally, to share with our readers what I feel is an excellent example of why the SCOTUS decision is perhaps not such a “no-brainer” after all. That many Americans are conflicted by it—even confused—but ready to respect the Court’s decision, as I am—in addition to those 48 states, 42 U.S. senators and veterans groups who sided with Snyder.
Please read “Between Garbage and Gold” by conservative—and I would say Constitutionalist— Jonah Goldberg.
Unless I have totally misread him (I had to read the piece twice or thrice), even Goldberg seems conflicted about the Supreme Court decision or, at the very least, struggling with his own perceptions and beliefs. Perhaps he is just trying to induce us to think. You be the judge.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.