Questions for SCOTUS: Why Snyder v. Phelps?

Last week in an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Snyder v. Phelps in favor of Westboro Baptist Church. These are the crazies at who protest the funerals of soldiers KIA because they believe that God is punishing the U.S. for its leniency towards gays* and, thus, God is allowing soldiers to be killed until the U.S. changes its policies. In fact, they believe that the more soldiers are killed, the better. Utter lunacy.

But this lunacy is protected as free speech. The very soldier whose funeral they are disrupting served and gave his life so that they would have this right.

I get it.

What I don’t get is why SCOTUS even chose to hear this case. Many cases are presented to SCOTUS and decisions are made whether to hear a particular case. Granted, I’m not a legal expert; but why select this case? This seems to fall into the category of hard cases that make bad law.

My second question is why do we keep looking at free speech in cases where people are doing really offensive things, e.g. pornography and disrupting a military funeral? We have no shortage of protesters and most of them are screaming about something. Yet, we live in a democratic society which, despite its faults, has a lot of processes for expressing discontent and disagreement. More importantly, we have the means to address these concerns not just to express them.

When I see protesters like the Westboro group (and many others), all I see and hear is their anger. I don’t hear speech or see a reasonable conversation taking place. In this age of the Internet, it’s not as if people don’t have the means to write and say what they believe.

It’s difficult to think that the speeches of someone like Martin Luther King fall into the same category as protesters like those from the Westboro Church.

Let’s face it, the Westboro types want one thing: attention. They don’t care who they hurt or offend. And these types of protests are utterly useless except for hurting innocent people, getting headlines, and generating a lot of legal revenue. If Westboro wants to change the policies towards gays, then become part of the democratic process. Explain the position. Convince others. Get involved in drafting legislation and electing politicians who would be favorable to the positions. Heck, they can even run for office themselves.

Instead, we’ve just given them a constitutional right to stand just about wherever they want and have a tantrum. Oh, and they get a police escort, too.

On a personal note, my brother was KIA in Afghanistan. Our family was very blessed to have our entire community supporting us. At the funeral, we also had the Patriot Guard Riders whose purpose is to protect families from protesters. They get that funerals are not the time and place for protests. When we met with our excellent military liaison, he warned us about the possibility of protests and hate mail. That was painful enough, just salt poured on the gaping wound of having lost Bruno. But I can’t even begin to imagine how hurtful it must have been for the Snyder family to know about the protest that actually happened at the funeral.

We have many freedoms, more than most people in the world. But it seems that we, as a society, do not value those freedoms when we use them as cover for malicious activities.

Again, I get that we have to protect everyone’s freedom of speech. What I don’t get is why we set up some of the worst examples as the cases which deserve protection.

And I don’t get why we don’t promote examples of rational discourse. As children some of us are taught that throwing a fit will get you nothing. Clearly, many people missed out on that lesson and they even get constitutional coverage for it.

Here’s Justice Alito’s dissent.

[*I’m really hesitant to use the term “gay” as I find it problematic in a lot of ways, not least of which is that I generally don’t think someone’s sexual orientation should define them as a person.]