Court makes a tough decision but the only one that it could

No one ever said remaining a free country is easy or comfortable. And few instances in memory rise to the level of last week’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Snyder v. Phelps to demonstrate just how tough it can be.

Snyder in that title is Albert Snyder, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died March 3, 2006, in Iraq’s Anbar province. Albert Snyder has already given the country what no man should have to, and what far too many have had to: a son.

Phelps is Fred Phelps, a self promoting preacher of hate who is so convinced of his moral superiority that he chooses the funerals of U.S. soldiers to attract attention to himself and his handful of followers. He preaches that anything bad that happens to the United States is deserved because the country does not practice Phelps’ form of bigotry against homosexuals.

Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church didn’t know Snyder, but seven of them traveled from Kansas to Maryland to demonstrate. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the Westboro seven stood outside the Roman Catholic church where Cpl. Snyder’s services were held, holding signs with messages such as “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags” and “You’re Going to Hell.”

Albert Snyder didn’t see the signs until a television news account later that night. He also found a church-penned “epic” on the Internet that denounced his son.

He was in pain and he was angry and he sought what he felt would be justice by suing Phelps for intentional infliction of emotional distress. A jury awarded the father $11 million in damages.

And then the case went to the Supreme Court.

Beyond misguided

To say that Phelps is misguided is to give him too much credit. He is a despicable self-promoter who perverts religion with a cruelty that is an insult to Christianity.

All that and more being said about this hate-filled preacher, the Supreme Court got it right when it ruled that Phelps and his band of misfits enjoy the protection of the First Amendment.

That they get to practice that freedom in ways that insult the people who died in service to the very Constitution they depend on for protection is a cruel irony. But clearly, no First Amendment is needed to protect popular speech. Those who speak in ways that please the majority are in little danger of being stifled or censored. It is those who speak out against what they see as the errors of a majority who need government to protect their freedom of speech.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the 8-1 decision that the First Amendment shields speech and protests on “matters of public import on public property (conducted) in a peaceful manner and in full compliance with local officials.” In his dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, “our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.” While everyone outside the Phelps clan can agree on the viciousness of what Phelps did, giving individual police and judicial jurisdictions the freedom to make value judgments about what constitutes unobjectionable speech would gut the protections enshrined in the First Amendment.

The beauty and power of the First Amendment is that it protects even ugly speech mouthed by troubled souls such as Fred Phelps. And it allows equal access to public areas to those who hold views directly opposite those of Phelps and wish to peacefully express them.