I've been a member of DailyKos here for almost a year and I've decided to put up my first diary about the verdict handed down yesterday in a case in Baltimore. I encourage you to read the whole article in the Baltimore Sun.
To some up here is the very beginning of the Sun's piece on the story:
A federal jury in Baltimore awarded nearly $11 million yesterday to the father of a Marine killed in Iraq, deciding that the family's privacy had been invaded by a Kansas church whose members waved anti-gay signs at the funeral.
It was the first-ever verdict against Westboro Baptist Church, a fundamentalist Christian group based in Topeka that has protested military funerals across the country with placards bearing shock-value messages such as "Thank God for dead soldiers."
They contend that the deaths are punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality and of gays in the military.
Relatives of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder wept and hugged at the jury's announcement, which came a day after closing arguments in the civil trial in federal district court.
When I first read about this story when I saw it linked on Drudge last week, I was truly shocked. Fred Phelps is human garbage. Not only is he hateful, not only has he brainwashed his children to hate, he is so heartless and cruel that he has no compunction whatsoever about publicly celebrating the death of a marine in front of the parents who are burying their son.
It is easy to dismiss him as just a kook. He is a kook, but he's not just a kook. He's more media savvy than we may want to admit. The outrageousness of the protests his "church" is in engaging in have given him the platform he desires to spread his message of hate. When you realize that the appeal process will only give him a larger platform it makes you cringe. He knows it himself:
"It's going to be reversed in five minutes," he said. This case, he added, "will elevate me to something important," as it draws more publicity to his cause.
Once you get past the outrage I think most people have when they read this garbage, this case is interesting on a few of levels:
- These protests have gained the attention and outrage of many on the right. I think outrage is the appropriate response, so, to the extent they can legally make life difficult for folks in the Westboro church, I say "strength to their arms". Still, I wonder how they can make a case against the church with any intellectual integrity. After all, the right to privacy does not exist anywhere in the Constitution, right?
- When we pay attention to kooks like Fred Phelps aren't we just giving them what they want? Ink, attention and the time of day. Might it just be better to ignore them all together? After giving it some thought I think you need to triage human garbage like this as it comes along on a case by case basis. In this case I think it is better to engage. They are causing families real suffering at what is almost certainly the worst moment of their lives.
- The case is interesting on Constitional grounds. Where is the correct balance between the parent's right to privacy and the Church's right to speech? It will be appealed to the 4th Circuit in Richmond which I believe leans quite a bit to the right. What a conservative position on a case like this is I can't even guess. I have no idea what the relevent legal precedents in this case might be. If anyone knows please enlighten us. Still I have to think this ruling will not hold. The judge's instruction to the jury were as follows:
Bennett said the jurors must decide "whether the defendant's actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous, and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection."
Surely this standard is too low a barrier for our right to express ourselves. A reasonable person could find almost anything highly offensive.
I don't really have a poetic way to tie this all together. There are a lot of issues at play in this story that reasonable folks could differ on so I'll leave them to the poll and your comments. My own thought on the case is that there is such thing as a right to privacy. When you consider the emotions involved, the possibilities of vigilante justice, and threat to public peace, I think the right to privacy should be given a wide birth at the expense of the 1st amendment rights of the Westboro church. The family should not have to see any of these human rejects. I don't think they should be anywhere in sight near the mourners at the church, during the procession, or at the burial.