There is now a case before the Supreme Court of paramount importance to testing the limits of free speech. The case refers to the radical hate group, Westboro Baptist Church, who will be visiting Eastern Washington soon. The case deals with the group’s protest at the funeral of Lance Cpl Matthew A. Snyder, who died in Iraq. The group stood outside the church during his funeral, carrying such banners as “Thank God for dead soldiers.” The reason the church protested the funeral was simple. To them, many of the nation’s problems, including the Iraq War, are because God hates gay people.
According to the group, everything from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf Oil Spill can be blamed on gay people and nonbelievers. Westboro has also called Jewish people the “real Nazis” and protested against a diverse group of individuals from Ronald Reagan to Coretta Scott King.
To put it bluntly, there are very few people in this country in agreement with the Westboro Baptist Church. For many of the Supreme Court justices, the case will not be a question of right and wrong, but how to issue an opinion upholding American values without triggering an Orwellian scenario where the government can restrict any speech they deem unacceptable.
The American Civil Liberties Union unsurprisingly took the other side of the issue. To them, speech should be nearly unrestricted regardless of the message.
However, if the ACLU’s fight in the court prevails, other messages such as cyberbullying could also be deemed legal. Cyberbullying is the latest of free speech controversies where people have been charged with bullying others, usually teens, via social networks. Many of these cases have ended in suicide.
If the justices make too broad of a ruling, this harassment could certainly fall under the guise of free speech because all speech would be unrestricted and bullying, though hateful, is not always physically violent.
Fortunately, there are options to ban groups such as Westboro from funerals while upholding the right to protest.
The Westboro Church did a few things at the funeral protests to set it apart from others. By protesting during a funeral, Westboro made their message unavoidable. Unlike a standard pamphlet, or a protest on any other day of the year, they forced the funeral attendees to see and hear their message no matter any reasonable effort to avoid it. That is not free speech, it is harassment.
Whenever someone is forced to listen, freedom of speech no longer applies. Inherent in any freedom should be the right to change channels, to put down the paper or avoid the protest. Our freedom of speech must also have a freedom to avoid speech built in. Without that guarantee, protests at funerals, cyberbullying and other forms of harassment become perfectly legal. With the advent of online media, the opportunity to harass people for a cause becomes exceptionally easy. Some basic preventative measures are needed to preserve American freedoms.
The justices now have an opportunity to help define these rights for all Americans so freedom of speech is legal, but harassment through the actions of individuals and groups such as Westboro remains illegal.
Westboro followers will be protesting at Gonzaga U. and Eastern Washington U. on Oct. 21. Hopefully, the students at these fine institutions will just leave the morons of Westboro alone to be hoisted on their own petard. If anyone present at these rallies is deserving of the eternal consequences the group is likely to describe during those protests, it is the Westboro congregates.