Westboro Baptist Church military funeral protests ruling reinforces rule of law Commentary
Westboro Baptist Church military funeral protests ruling reinforces rule of law
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Howard M. Friedman [Distinguished University Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Toledo College of Law]: "In a world full of bad news, we can sometimes find optimism in strange places. Maryland federal district Judge John Bennett's careful ruling in a lawsuit against the unsavory members of Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church is one of those places. The ruling gives me pride and continuing confidence in the legal profession. It demonstrates that the rule of law still prevails, even when emotionally and politically charged cases come before our courts.

Westboro Baptist Church, led by Rev. Fred Phelps and his family, is among the most homophobic of organizations around. It has mastered the art of the outrageous in order to gain media attention. Its members travel around the country picketing funerals of our young heroes who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The picketers' message is that U.S. soldiers are dying because our country tolerates homosexuality. Revulsion at these picketers' tactics has led 32 states as well as the federal government to enact laws protecting the privacy of funeral ceremonies from demonstrators. Those laws have generated their own series of Constitutional issues. Are they narrowly enough drawn to protect First Amendment speech concerns?

Judge Bennett's decision came in a lawsuit brought by the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder who died 19 months ago in a non-combat related vehicle accident in Al Anbar Province in Iraq. Judge Bennett, first of all, apparently made a careful distinction between language that appeared on Westboro's website and that which appeared on picketers' signs outside Snyder's funeral ceremony. The website addressed Matthew's parents with offensive statements such as, "You had a duty to prepare that child to serve the Lord his God—period. You did just the opposite—you raised him for the Devil." The website—with the URL "www.godhatesfags.com"— also proclaimed that Matthew's parents taught him to divorce and commit adultery. It continued with a tirade against the Catholic Church.

Judge Bennett found the website language does not amount to defamation because no reasonable person would think that it was intended to be a statement of fact. Nor did the website language invade the family's privacy since the declarations were merely a statement of the Church members' general religious beliefs. When it came to signs carried outside of the funeral ceremony at St. John's Roman Catholic Church, however, Judge Bennett struck the balance differently. He ordered to case to go to trial on claims that this intrusion amounted to tortuous invasion of the family's expectation of privacy and constituted intentional infliction of emotional distress on the family.

This case also points out a civil liberties battle that is rapidly emerging in the U.S. and in Europe as well. Conservative Christians who feel compelled to denounce homosexual behavior are raising louder and louder objections to attempts to treat gay and lesbian members of society as equals. The White House is threatening to veto the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act which has passed both houses of Congress and awaits reconciliation in a single bill. Despite the President's shifting rationales to support his veto threat, the political force behind the objections are conservative ministers who fear that their fire-and-brimstone preaching against gays and lesbians will need to be tempered. Strong language in the bill protecting First Amendment rights has been insufficient to stem the tide of objections. Apparently the opponents' fear is that some of that preaching—like language used by Westboro Baptist Church—may actually incite physical violence against the GLBT community, and that this, in turn, could lead to "hate crime" charges against clergy. The ultimate fate of this legislation may tell us much about whether America is prepared to tolerate bigotry in the guise of religious doctrine."

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