"Welcome, depraved sons and daughters of Adam."
This is the welcome message of the Westboro Baptist Church's website. They are an organization that has been stirring up a boatload of controversy over the past 15 years. Unsurprisingly, given their controversial views, the church has started an important debate about the limits of freedom of speech, religion and assembly.
After the creation of the United States Constitution in 1787, James Madison and many of the other delegates at the Philadelphia Convention felt that the document lacked some important guarantees of civil liberties. Thus, in 1789 Mr. Madison developed 10 amendments to the Constitution that spelled out limits on the power of the government to regulate society. Today, Americans know these amendments as the Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment of the Constitution reads:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
If you go up to someone within the United States and ask them what the most important civil liberty is, chances are they'll say one that appears within the First Amendment, unless of course he or she is a card-carrying member of the NRA. The freedoms of speech, religion, assembly and redress form a core set of values that I personally believe make the United States and other democracies with the same values decent places to live. Thus, when I ran into the particular situation of the Westboro Baptist Church I initially wasn't quite sure what to think.
Many readers have probably heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Founded in 1955, the church holds the view that the United States' toleration of homosexuals has turned God against our nation. Their particular view of the world concludes that everything from coal mine disasters to Hurricane Katrina result from God's punishment of the United States for tolerating homosexuality. Given that they have a relatively small congregation of around 100 members, under most circumstances they would have remained nothing more than another lunatic fringe group to be dismissed with a scoff and wave of the hand.
However, unlike many other fringe groups, the Westboro Baptist Church has been willing to do pretty much anything and everything to stay within the media spotlight. Fifteen years ago, the church started picketing AIDS benefits, diversity events and other events that include homosexuality on the agenda. While certainly reprehensible, the events that they picketed were generally public events. However, beginning in 1998, the Westboro Baptist Church hit upon a new idea. Instead of limiting their protests to events, they began to picket funerals as well.
Their inaugural funeral picketing was the funeral of Matthew Shepard in the fall of 1998. Since then they have continued their funeral picketing practices. Beginning in 2005, they began to picket the funerals of U.S. soldiers who were killed overseas. They continue to do it to this day. On their website, they have a list of protests through the next couple weeks. All but one of them will be occurring at the funeral of a U.S. soldier killed overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan as "God's punishment" for tolerating homosexuality.
When I first learned of what was happening at these funerals from press accounts and pictures of the protests, I was livid. The thought that these crazies would stoop low enough to do such a thing boggled my mind. My immediate reaction to the news was the thought that there should be a law against these protests. Whether the funeral is for a victim of a hate crime or a soldier who died overseas, sullying a funeral with protests seems to me to be the lowliest of acts.
I imagine that a large majority of Americans agree with my point of view. Yet, at the same time, the Constitution declares the freedom of speech and religion, and the government's inability to abridge that freedom. Just because most of the people in the United States abhor the actions of this small fringe group doesn't give them the right to take away their freedom of speech. Still, their actions seem so completely against any modicum of human decency that I believe something must be done.
Funerals have a particularly strong emotional and spiritual component to them. Moreover, they are private events at heart. A funeral for a private citizen who is not a public figure usually only draws close friends and relatives of the deceased. The father of one fallen soldier sued the Westboro Baptist Church for invading his privacy at the funeral, as well as causing emotional abuse. I completely agree with this argument and find it a reasonable limitation of free speech. The civil court agreed with his argument and awarded $10.9 million in damages.
Fred Phelps, the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, has argued that denying his group the ability to conduct these protests via laws or lawsuits amounts to an infringement on their freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
In a case like this, we as Americans should be worried about setting a dangerous precedent for restricting the freedoms of speech, religion and assembly. However, do not forget that there are already situational curbs on free speech. Breaching the peace or causing intentional emotional abuse through speech are both off-limits. The classic example is shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Another example would be stirring up a crowd of people to start a riot or incite them to do some other illegal activity.
I believe the Westboro protests fall into this same category: a specific situation where it is completely appropriate to suspend freedom of speech. The important thing to remember with the laws against protests near funerals is that they affect everyone. No one can protest near them, whether I want to or the Westboro Baptist Church wants to. They are nondiscriminatory in that way and don't give preference to any particular view.
Freedom of speech, religion and assembly has limits. In the interests of protecting the families of deceased soldiers, victims of hate crimes, or any other death that the Westboro Baptist Church wants to celebrate, I have no problem with making it illegal for any group to protest outside a funeral. In certain targeted situations, I believe the state has the authority to take into account the overwhelming opinion of society and limit the harm that an extremist group can cause.
Andrew Wagner ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in computer science and political science.
