Several diaries today have lauded the awarding of $10.9 million to the father of a marine whose son's funeral was picketed by the rabidly insane Westboro Baptist Church led by the congenitally insane Phelps family. The award was for "defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress" according the story currently running on CNN.com.
As much as I dislike the Phelps family this is a truly terrible verdict and it's hard to imagine that it will not be overturned.
Read on -->
The Phelps family are longtime picketers of gay funerals in which they hold up signs and chant slogans indicating that AIDS is god's punishment on gays -- who, in their cultured and measured way of speaking they invariable refer to as "fags". Not getting enough attention by picketing gay funerals, they began picketing military funerals on the grounds that god is causing soldiers to be killed as retribution against America for allowing homosexuality to exist. Or something along those lines, the logic isn't 100% clear.
These people are completely and totally insane. Their beliefs (if you can consider people of such diminished moral capacity able to hold beliefs) are reprehensible. They deserve universal condemnation -- which they generally receive. They are moral pariahs and social lepers of the first order. To be completely clear, I don't like them.
And yet they are entitled to have their opinions, and they are entitled to express them publicly. The acts for which they have been punished constitute standing in a public place and holding protest signs and chanting. They are not charged with anything else. They are not charged with physically restraining or threatening anyone. They are not charged with trespass. They are not charged with actually disrupting funerals.
They are, in short, charged with using the standard tactics of political protest. There is almost no distance at all to go from the verdict today to an outright ban on protesting the war.
Note that this lawsuit essentially prohibits protests aimed at the military. The man who filed the suit (the father of the marine whose funeral was picketed) said:
Al Snyder, father of the slain Marine, said he considered filing the lawsuit for a long time before going forward and that he hoped the judgment would make it harder for the church to continue such protests.
. . .
"As far as their picketing goes, they want to do it in front of a courthouse, they want to do it in a public park, I could care less. But I couldn't let them get away with doing this to our military," Al Snyder said.
Therefore, the decision essentially states that protest is not permitted if it "defames" military personnel or their families, invades the privacy of military personnel or their families, or inflicts "emotional distress" on military personnel or their families.
Anyone who doesn't immediately see the application of this argument to political -- specifically anti-war -- protest needs to have their eyes checked. According to this logic, if I were to stand on a street corner with an anti-war sign and I were seen by a family member of someone serving in Iraq who took offense, I should expect to be socked with a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
The Phelpses are disgusting people. But standing on a street corner holding signs and chanting is not disgusting. In this case it was not the actions the Phelps' took that cost them $10.9 million. It was the content of their speech for which they're being punished.
In America, you should not be subject to legal punishment for the content of your speech.