Few groups have gotten such a large majority of the American public as riled up as the Westboro Baptist Church has. Notorious for protesting at the funerals of soldiers, members of the church preach that things such as AIDS and the deaths of soldiers are God’s way of punishing America for its sins, particularly homosexuality. But after protesting at the funeral of one Marine who died in Iraq, the indefensible Westboro Baptist Church found itself the defendant in a lawsuit that has now made it all the way up to the Supreme Court.
The decision facing the Supreme Court justices is at once incredibly simple and incredibly complex &- should the government be able to abridge freedom of speech in extreme cases? Although it is easy to condemn the Westboro Baptist Church for its relentless targeting of innocent individuals, the issue has to be viewed in a broader context, taking into account the decision’s implications for free speech in the future.
Attempts to draw a line between what kind of speech is protected under the first amendment and what kind is not will never work. This would only result in ambiguity, causing people to continue to test the limits for years to come. Whenever a line of this sort is drawn, it will inevitably be pushed.
Part of the luxury of living in a country that ensures freedom of speech is that we have to learn to take the good with the bad. In exchange for the right to be able to say anything we want, we have to accept the fact that certain things are going to offend us.
Members of the Westboro Baptist Church are crass, offensive and delusional. This is clear upon listening to them try to defend their inane beliefs. They represent the extreme of what can happen when you grant people the right to free speech. But to allow the actions of one radical group to set a precedent curtailing America’s basic principle of free speech would be a shame.
Voltaire once said, “I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This is the principle that the Supreme Court should act on when they rule on the case of Snyder v. Phelps.
Although the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are both wrong and offensive, it isn’t up to the Supreme Court to cast value judgments, but rather to uphold the quintessential rights of the people, chief among those the freedom of speech.
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