It’s Hate Speech — But Protected by the Constitution

It's taken me a while to react to this decision by the Supreme Court because I'm still mulling over my reaction to the whole thing.I have to say I’m not surprised at the outcome of this case. It seemed rather obvious from the questioning when the case was being argued in front of the Supreme Court what the ruling would be. At the time, I thought what other decision could possibly be reached. The protests by this cult are despicable and heinous but what can you do about it. It is their right to protest.

This from the majority opinion:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing at fallen soldiers’ funerals “is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible.” But he said the reaction may not be “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,” Roberts said.

There was one dissenting opinion:

In Justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting statement Wednesday, he said the Snyder case should have been viewed differently because the father was not a public figure.

“Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case,” Alito wrote, adding that giving a family “a few hours of peace without harassment” would not undermine public debate.

At first I agreed with the majority. But as hard as it is to believe but on this one I think I’m going to agree with Alito’s opinion. Art and I had a discussion on this on our most recent podcast. It does seem to me there must be some way to put limited restrictions on speech without cutting it off completely.

The real irony here is this cult has been around for years back to the 1990s. Doing that exact same thing protesting at funerals. Almost exclusively at men who've died from AIDS the vast majority of these men being gay.

I guess I have to ask why did it take so long for the country to notice this and decide it was a horrible thing to do.