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I’ve been told that if I can’t say something good about someone I shouldn’t say anything at all.
OK then, the Rev. Fred Phelps appears to have acceptable personal hygiene habits and may be assumed to change his underwear regularly. Beyond that, I’d say he’s pretty much a turd in life’s punchbowl.
Fred Phelps — you’ve heard of him — is the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church, total estimated membership, 10 — who’s made it his mission to travel coast-to-coast preaching that we’re all going to Hell in a handcart because God is supremely annoyed with America’s growing tolerance toward people whose sexual orientation may have strayed from the straight and narrow.
“God hates fags,” he preaches, claiming that the war in Iraq is divine retribution for the popularity of “Will and Grace,” and that the righteous — he and the other nine folks he seems to expect to be populating Heaven — ought to rejoice with the Lord over every dead U.S. soldier.
Preaching that within sight and earshot of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder’s funeral just cost him $11 million, or so said a Maryland jury.
Phelps may stand in relation to your pastor as Josef Mengele would to your family doctor, but that was a bad verdict. A very bad verdict.
Now don’t get me wrong, if the earth itself were to split open and swallow him up, I wouldn’t feel the least bit bad for Phelps. God has every right and reason to shut him up. Not so an American court.
The Snyder family won its case arguing it had suffered “an invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress” due to the rantings of Phelps and his foul little flock. That’s a dangerous precedent.
Because if the court can shut up Fred Phelps for protesting in what it deems inappropriate content, manner and place so as to cause “emotional distress,” who will be next?
The family Phelps shouted their slogans and waved their signs from public streets and sidewalks. It was a public protest of public policy intended to influence public opinion. No matter what they were shouting, the Constitution says they have the right to shout it.
Let us review: “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.”
The Founders didn’t write in any exceptions. There’s no second paragraph to the First Amendment qualifying those guarantees in the case that a citizen’s words would embarrass the president, demoralize the troops, cast aspersions on the honor of elected officials, defame the dignity of the nation or cause emotional distress.
There is no constitutional protection against being offended. On the contrary, the Constitution’s authors clearly presumed that our fellow citizens’ exercise of those First Amendment rights would leave us offended. It relies upon our collective sense of outrage at injustice, civic stupidity and power abused to set matters aright when they threaten to go wrong.
As citizens, it is our right, our obligation, to be offended, to be made uncomfortable. There are the times when we need to be prodded to examine our assumptions of right and wrong, to be told that black is white and be challenged to rise up and argue otherwise.
Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eugene Debs, Margaret Sanger, Martin Luther King: They made people uncomfortable, caused emotional distress. Some people were offended by the things they said and wanted them silenced. But they were Americans; their words, albeit imperfectly, were protected. Their voices were heard.
But for every Martin Luther King there is a Father Coughlin, a George Lincoln Rockwell, Joe McCarthy or Fred Phelps. Like it or not, it’s their Constitution too.
If that Maryland court can fine Fred Phelps $11 million, who is next? The priest who accuses an abortionist of murder or the parishioner who wears a rainbow sash to Mass?
Will peace marchers be sued for annoying the president, for displaying graphic photos of dead Iraqis that may disturb his sleep or his wife’s? What about the citizen who asks too many pointed questions of the city council or the school board? The guy who paces with a cardboard sign to protest the local porn store?
There may be nothing good to be said of Fred Phelps, but if there were, no court should threaten your right to say it.
Not in this country.
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3522 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com.
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cewoodford wrote on Nov 12, 2007 3:37 PM: