{"id":3010,"date":"2010-10-02T03:12:54","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T10:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3010"},"modified":"2010-10-02T03:12:54","modified_gmt":"2010-10-02T10:12:54","slug":"republicans-take-hate-to-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/02\/republicans-take-hate-to-the-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Take Hate to the Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

There can be no doubt that the bigoted antics of Westboro Baptist Republicans at funerals is hateful.  There is no doubt that the families of fallen soldiers should be protected against such such vile behavior.  Now the Supreme Court must decide if it is legal.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"2westboro\"<\/a> The most vexing free speech fight in years confronts the Supreme Court on Wednesday, pitting a loud-mouthed, anti-gay Kansas church against a grieving Pennsylvania father. <\/p>\n

The father, Albert Snyder, has already won the popular vote hands-down. Forty-eight states support him. So do 42 senators and all the major veterans’ organizations.<\/p>\n

The constitutional tally, though, isn’t nearly so simple. <\/p>\n

"The government may not curtail speech simply because the speaker’s message may be offensive to his audience," University of Missouri Law School Professor Christina Wells noted in a legal filing.<\/p>\n

In Snyder v. Phelps, justices will decide whether to protect speech that Wells characterized as "provocative, offensive and disrespectful." Wells acknowledged it might even be considered "contemptible."<\/p>\n

For all the pain they may have caused, however the public rants against homosexuality by the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., might just be found to be protected by the First Amendment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

"This is obviously an emotion-laden case," said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, but "the First Amendment was designed to protect unpopular speech against (the majority’s) distaste. At the end of the day I think that’s where the Supreme Court ends up."\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <McClatchy DC<\/a>><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the key.  With the caveat that I would personally like nothing better than to see Phelps and his Republican bigots muzzled,  I have to agree with the ACLU.  If their speech does not include direct calls for violence against gay people, it must be protected, because if it is not, the next speech to be outlawed will be our own.<\/font><\/p>\n

I do have an alternate approach, however.  Interfering with the grief of a family at such a time in such a manner does interfere with the family\u2019s right to privacy, so I think there could be a good case for allowing these Republicans to demonstrate only in places where that cannot be seen or heard from the funeral site, the cemetary, and the route between the two.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There can be no doubt that the bigoted antics of Westboro Baptist Republicans at funerals is hateful.  There is no doubt that the families of fallen soldiers should be protected against such such vile behavior.  Now the Supreme Court must decide if it is legal. The most vexing free speech fight in years confronts the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}