[Vision2020] A Call for Justice

[Paul Rumelhart]

Once again I'm put in a position where I have to side with people I frankly think are evil and are lacking even a smidgen of tact or good sense.  What it comes down to is this: either freedom of speech means something or it doesn't.  If you start looking at the message and basing your decisions on that, then it's no longer free speech.  You've just thrown that concept out of the window.

Freedom of speech is a double-edged sword, there's no doubt about it.  If you want the ability to complain about your taxes or to express your opinion on politics in public, or to describe an act of police brutality without being beaten yourself, then you have to allow these twits to call your dead son a fag in public at his funeral.

I don't blame this guy for doing what he's done.  I may have done the same in his shoes.  In the end, though, I'm glad he lost his case.

Now, forcing him to pay those sons of bitches court costs is another story altogether.

I'd also like to say that Fred Phelps and his friends wouldn't have done this if they didn't think God told them to in the form of a holy book that allegedly claims that homosexuals are an abomination.  If you take the position that what these guys said crosses some imaginary line, then you have to look at the Bible in the same light.

It's better by far to be extremely strict in where the lines are drawn, i.e. yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.

Paul


--- On Tue, 3/30/10, Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:

> From: Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>
> Subject: [Vision2020] A Call for Justice
> To: "Moscow Vision 2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Date: Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 7:07 AM
> Courtesy of the Army Times at:
> 
> http://www.ArmyTimes.com
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Fallen Marine’s dad takes case against funeral protesters
> to Supreme Court
> 
> By Dan Lamothe
> 
> YORK, Pa. — Albert Snyder’s eyes well up with tears
> when he recalls his
> son’s funeral. More than 1,200 people packed St. John
> Catholic Church in
> Westminster, Md., on March 10, 2006, to pay their respects
> to 20-year-old
> Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died when his Humvee rolled
> over in Iraq’s
> Anbar province while he manned the vehicle’s gun turret.
> 
> On their trip from the church to a nearby veterans
> cemetery, small-town
> patriotism was on full display. Cars pulled over and
> allowed the funeral
> procession to pass. Strangers on the street saluted.
> 
> “I’ve never seen a funeral like this in my life,” the
> father said, his
> voice wavering. “It was just amaz­ing to see.” But the
> funeral was marred
> by seven uninvited guests — members of the Westboro
> Baptist Church who
> flew in from their headquar­ters in Topeka, Kan., to
> picket the outside
> the church service.
> 
> Carrying signs reading “Semper Fi Fags ,” “Thank God
> for Dead Sol­diers”
> and “Thank God for IEDs,” the group infuriated
> passersby and mourners —
> just as its mem­bers have at hundreds of military funerals
> across the
> country before and since.
> 
> Led by founder Fred Phelps, the group maintains that God
> kills U.S. troops
> as punishment for the country’s tolerance of
> homosexual­ity, greed and
> abortion.
> 
> Snyder wasn’t going to take that lying down.
> 
> Four years after his son’s death, this modest automation
> equip­ment
> salesman and a small team of lawyers are taking their case
> all the way to
> the Supreme Court, where they will argue that Phelps’
> right to free speech
> does not super­sede mourners’ rights to lay their family
> members to rest
> without facing an insulting public protest.
> 
> Snyder is seeking $5 million in emotional and punitive
> damages from
> Westboro Baptist and mem­bers of the Phelps family. He
> hopes that a legal
> victory will spare others the torment he and hundreds of
> other military
> fami­lies have been forced to endure.
> 
> The court, which takes only one in a hundred cases it’s
> asked to consider,
> agreed in March to hear the case. Arguments are scheduled
> for the fall
> court term, which begins in October.
> 
> “I knew these people were going to be at Matt’s
> funeral, but in my mind,
> this day was about Matt, and that’s strictly what it was
> about,” Snyder
> said. “People think that these were seven people who
> showed up with little
> signs. There were people flipping them the fin­ger,
> yelling at them from
> cars. And this is the way you’re going to bury someone
> who died for their
> country?”
> 
> Fighting back
> 
> Snyder’s fight started almost immediately. He sued the
> West­boro church
> for defamation, inva­sion of privacy and intentional
> infliction of
> emotional distress.
> 
> His suit charged that a screed against the Snyders posted
> on one of the
> church’s Web sites was defamatory. Titled “The Burden
> of Marine Lance Cpl.
> Matthew A. Snyder,” the rant accused his parents of
> raising their son “for
> the devil.” It also accused them of teaching him to
> commit adultery and
> divorce and to “support the largest pedophile machine in
> the history of
> the entire world, the Roman Catholic monstrosity.”
> Finally, the suit
> argued that the church meant to harm Snyder’s family
> emotionally.
> 
> The suit did not ask for a specif­ic amount of money, but
> said the
> Westboro group should have to pay emotional damages,
> Snyder’s court costs
> and punitive damages for their “reprehensible actions.”
> “I thought about
> it and about what they did to me, and how Matt would have
> felt if somebody
> had done this to one of his brothers from Iraq,” he said.
> “And I decided,
> ‘I’m going to go through with this.’ ” The church
> sought to quash the
> lawsuit, arguing during a trial in Baltimore in October
> 2007 that its
> members did not intend to cause emotional distress. Their
> protest was kept
> 1,000 feet from the church’s doors, they pointed out.
> They needed to
> preach to “doomed America” in public places to let it
> be known the
> acceptance of homo­sexuality is wrong, they said.
> 
> The jury didn’t buy their argu­ment. On Oct. 31, 2007,
> it found in
> Snyder’s favor, awarding him $10.9 million in damages —
> enough to
> effectively bankrupt the 70-member church.
> 
> ‘An insult’
> 
> The Westboro group immediate­ly appealed the decision.
> 
> In February 2008, a federal judge in Baltimore decided to
> reduce the
> damages to $5 million. The church’s next appeal went to
> the 4th U.S.
> Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
> 
> That court overturned the origi­nal decision, with a
> three-judge panel
> ruling the Phelps family’s signs and internet criticism
> of the Snyders was
> protected as free speech under the First Amend­ment, even
> if the discourse
> was “repugnant,” Judge Robert King wrote in the
> court’s opinion.
> 
> Snyder struggled with his next step, too.
> 
> In an interview, Snyder said bal­ancing the legal battle,
> interview
> requests and day-to-day life has been overwhelming at
> times. He has
> accrued about $50,000 in legal bills, even though his
> attorneys do not
> charge him for their time. He launched a Web site at
> 
> http://www.matthewsnyder.org
> 
> to help collect money for the fight, but is “still a long
> way off” from
> paying for everything.
> 
> “I don’t want to take anyone’s free speech away,”
> Snyder said. “But I
> don’t want anybody to do anything to the people who gave
> us that free
> speech. Too many peo­ple have died to protect it, and for
> someone to hide
> behind it and abuse it is an insult.” Legal experts are
> uncertain how the
> case will play out. They ques­tion whether the court will
> rule in favor of
> Snyder if it means the right to free speech will be limited
> in any way.
> 
> -----------------
> 
> Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder and his father, Albert.
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/Matthew-Snyder
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Pro patria.
> 
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
> 
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
> 
> "Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion
> but the
> tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."
> 
> -- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.
> 
> =======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet, 
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since
> 1994.   
>            
>    http://www.fsr.net         
>              
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>