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.
Scores of people don’t have to imagine such hateful vitriol and the pain caused by it because, tragically, they have experienced such first-hand. Unfortunately and shamefully, many others will also experience it as such protests continue, ostensibly under the protection of the First Amendment.
At one funeral, four years ago, the sign “Semper Fi Fags” was particularly jarring and hateful because the funeral service that was so vilely desecrated was for a young hero, a U.S. Marine.
The hero was Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, of Finksburg, Maryland, who died in Iraq on March 3, 2006. Matthew was 20 years old and although his funeral took place four years ago, the dreadful memories of that day are still fresh in the minds of his family and friends and continue to live in infamy for all Americans who have seen, read or heard reports of that shameful event and of so many other military funerals where members of a group of people, the Phelps “flock,” continue to picket and spew their despicable, hate-filled ideology.
The people who appeared at young Matthew’s funeral are members of a so-called religious group from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, headed by its pastor Fred Phelps, who claim that the deaths of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are God’s punishment for America’s—and its military’s—acceptance of homosexuality. They show up at military funerals regardless of whether the fallen hero was gay or not.
Following that infamous event in March 2006, Matthew Snyder’s father, Albert Snyder, filed a suit against Phelps and some of his followers winning a lower court decision only to have it eventually thrown out last September by the 4th U.S. Court Circuit of Appeals.
Adding insult to injury, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Snyder to pay to Fred Phelps $16,510 in associated court costs incurred by the group.
Fortunately, donations by outraged Americans are pouring in to support Snyder’s court battles. Reportedly, commentator Bill O’Reilly has offered to pay court costs owed by Snyder.
In a recent column, Michael Smerconish wrote about an interview he had with Fred Phelps, just a few days after another protest at yet another dead Marine’s funeral. With respect to the First Amendment, Smerconish asks:
…by picketing Snyder’s funeral, didn’t Westboro Baptist infringe upon the family’s First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion? Which on March 10, 2006, took the form of a burial service at St. John’s Catholic Church in Westminster, Md. And because Westboro wasn’t protesting on a street corner or in a public park, it could also follow that they infringed upon the Snyders’ right to peaceably assemble for that private funeral service.
These questions and issues are now slated to be addressed and decided this fall when the U.S. Supreme Court will take up this case—one that goes to the core of the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free speech, including the point made by Smerconish:
… that while Phelps and his flock might believe they have a constitutionally protected right to protest at a funeral, that right should not come at the expense of the Snyders’ right to peaceably gather at a Catholic funeral. Especially when that practice involved mourning the death of an American hero.
Regrettably, until then, the Phelps group will continue its shameful and repugnant tactics and desecrate the funerals and the memories of many other fallen heroes. They have also staged protests at Jewish temples and more recently at the World War II memorial and at Washington-area schools, including the school attended by Sasha and Malia Obama.
Of course, the First Amendment is one of our most cherished and inviolable constitutional rights.
At the same time, scholars will point out that there are reasonable exceptions and limitations to our free speech rights such as the classical yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, defamation, obscenity, etc.
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.
Image: Courtesy, www.mil.state.or.us/OMFH/
