Defeat for extremismalso a defeat for First Amendment

I would like to cheer Wednesday’s decision finding that an extremist Kansas church whose members violated the privacy of the family of a soldier killed in Iraq by waving anti-gay signs during a protest at the funeral in 2006. But I can’t.

The ruling by the federal jury in Baltimore awards nearly $11 million to Albert Snyder, father of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder who died in a “vehicle accident in Anbar province in March 2006” less than a month after being deployed.

My a concerns about the decision stem from the conflict between two constitutional principles — privacy and free speech.

Westboro Baptist Church, a fundamentalist Christian group based in Topeka, has been protesting at military funerals across the country, saying that the soldiers’ deaths were punishment for homosexuality and for allowing gays to serve in the military. It is a bigoted message that is being touted by church members using a particularly reprehensible method.

Family members, like the Snyders, view the protests as an intrusion into their grief. I can understand their arguments: They are not public figures, after all, and they believe they have a reasonable right to be left alone in their grief.

But there is another issue on the table here, one that trumps the privacy concerns:

Some legal experts said the judgment could be a setback for those who believe in broad free-speech protections.

“I think when speech is a matter of public concern it still has to be protected, even when by social standards it is extraordinarily rude and outrageous,” said UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.

University of Maryland law professor Mark Graber said the size of award, which included $8 million in punitive damages, could have a chilling effect on speech.

“This was in a public space,” Graber said “While the actions are reprehensible, the First Amendment protects a lot that’s reprehensible.”

The operative phrase, for me, is “chilling effect on speech.” Rhymes with Right, a conservative blog, offers a fairly cogent summary of what this suit ultimate was about (The Opinionator at The New York Times offers a solid overview of the differing opinions on this):

So let’s be clear about the goal of this suit — it was to punish speech conducted in a public place, speech that is fully protected by the Constitution, on the grounds that it is hurtful, offensive, and outrageous. That troubles me very deeply, and it is my profound hope that the decision is thrown out on appeal as incompatible with the First Amendment.

Pam’s House Blend, a liberal blog, offers this:

I have doubts that this will hold up; the question is whether picketing outside a funeral is free speech, and I can’t see how it isn’t — the hatemongers have a right to picket if they are in a public space.

This probably sums up my feelings on this. What Westboro has to say is pretty vial and definitely out of the mainstream. But the First Amendment, if it is to remain relevant, must protect the vial and marginalized, and not just popular public opinion.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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A reminder: Don’t forget to fill your bags

The Scouts will be out this weekend to pick up the bags they left in mailboxes around town. The Food Pantry is looking for Thanksgiving items, if possible, but anything nonperishable — and not expired — will do. Just do what you can.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

UFOs are irrelevant

The headline in Dick Feagler’s column in The Cleveland Plain-Dealer says it all: “So Dennis Kucinich saw a UFO; what’s the big deal?”

As he says,

If true, this sounds no worse than the illusions that instructed the Bush administration.

They smelled something or felt something or heard something that sent us into Iraq. Are they cuckoo, too?

Well, yes, they are, but that’s another issue. Kucinich may be quirky, but on the issues that matter — getting out of Iraq, a national single-payer healthcare system — he is the sanest man in the race.

More from Feagler:

I don’t know what, if anything, Dennis said to Shirley MacLaine about a spaceship sighting. But I do know, thanks to the Internet, what a lot of people say about Dennis. Not here, maybe, but around the country. A lot of people like him because they think he’s talking straight. And that’s rare. And a lot of his straight talk is what a lot of people want to hear.

The last congressional election was supposed to be all about ending the war in Iraq. That was a year ago.

If you’ve watched these beauty contests, aka presidential debates, you might have been surprised to see that Iraq has become a second-tier issue.

But not for Dennis. He still wants out, ASAP.

If they’re still on speaking terms, Eleanor Roosevelt might have told Hillary to say she was sorry for voting to help plunge this nation into a bottomless war.

But being in love with yourself means you never have to say you’re sorry. If you’re up in the polls, that helps, too. Millions in your war chest helps more. But what helps most is a campaign consultant who urges you not to say what you really think.

So Hillary’s version of her war vote goes like this. (It’s familiar because she plagiarized it.) “I did not have sex with that war.”

Make fun of Dennis all you want. He can’t win. But he says what he means. That’s enough in this dismal political morass called a campaign, to bring me a slight whiff of roses.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.