Decency versus Free Speech

After seven days, Maryland jurors smote the Westboro Baptist Church and its leaders Wednesday, awarding a grieving father nearly $11 million after anti-gay protests disturbed his Marine son’s funeral.

The father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sobbed when the verdict was read in U.S. District Court. Members of the Topeka church listened with tight-lipped smiles to the findings that they had invaded Snyder’s privacy with intent to inflict emotional distress.

The federal jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for privacy loss and $2 million for distress. (source)

I grew up in a time when you did things for people. Instead of going to the mall (actually, we didn’t have malls in those days, we simply had little stores that specialized in clothing or whatever), we helped people out. If a neighbor was in trouble, we would offer our support, and our support was more than just words. Our support came in the form of helping that neighbor through deeds. If a funeral procession went by, you stopped and put your right hand over your heart and faced the funeral procession as they passed, out of respect for the family and the deceased. It was the proper and decent thing to do. And today, I still do that.

Today, our culture has changed a great deal, and not all in a good way. Yes, there have been some positive changes, such as more tolerance for despised minority groups. Somewhere in our fight for free speech, which we’ve had for a very long time, some of us it would seem have lost sight that there are times when it’s simply better to keep your mouth shut. Being able to say something does not mean that you should say it. But now days, more often than not it seems, people don’t give two cents about the other individuals feelings. Feelings are so politically correct after all, and politically correct seems to be going out of fashion.

I understand all of that, but whatever happened to just simple, every day, common decency? I’m glad that Fred Phelps disgusting group of thugs got hit big time with this settlement. He boasted afterwards, “Oh, it will take about five minutes to get that thing reversed.” Perhaps, but I would hope that Phelps, and a lot of the rest of us, would come away with two points from all of this...

1) Just because you can say something doesn’t mean that you should say it, out of consideration for others.
2) You do have free speech. But, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences to that free speech.

Nothing is free. If you want to say certain things, there could be actions taken against you. This is what has happened to the Westboro Baptist Church. Their actions caught up with them. So, my hope is that the appeal will fail, and they will be liable to pay these costs, which they are financially unable to do. I’m told that their combined net worth is around one million dollars. I don’t return their hate by saying this. I simply hope it will stick because without money, there’s not a hell of a lot they can do.

And while I’m on the subject of decency, I suppose it’s worth a mention that this group has done the same thing for many years at the funerals of gay men who died of AIDS, and of course, they picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard. America never cared about this activity until the group started targeting something more near and dear to the hearts of America; their straight sons who died in war were now being picketed at their funerals. How dare they? Pick on the gays, but not us. My un-Christian attitude on this is, “What goes around comes around”, but that’s not me. I’m more along the lines of, “Now you know how we felt.”

This is worth mention because this is precisely why the Phelps clan decided to stop picketing the funerals of gay men, and started targeting a larger and more sensational audience, dead soldiers. And it’s interesting to note the change that has taken place in the verbiage of the signs of this church.

From this....

To this....

They want the press coverage, and this is one way to get that. They have a right to their opinions and they have a right to express those opinions, but in my opinion, we have to find a way for them to have their freedom of speech, however vile we may think their message is, without them inflicting emotional damage on others. Picketing funerals crosses the line of decency. The emotional toll these people inflicted upon these families is what this settlement was about. The only difference is, they used words instead of a hammer. Had they used a hammer to do the same damage, they would have been prosecuted

Do we want any and all free speech at the expense of decency and a respect for what families are going through when they are simply trying to get through the hell of laying their son to rest? Somewhere, something went terribly wrong.