Long before they threatened to show up in Hastings to protest the staging of a play based on the murder of a young gay man, the Westboro Baptist Church first hit my radar back in the early 1990s. I was living in Southwest Missouri at the time when Phelps' pickets showed up at a funeral of a man who died from AIDS.
Even in deeply conservative Springfield, home to the Assemblies of God and John Ashcroft, the action registered as deeply cruel, beyond all politics.
Certainly, Phelps' theology was a slap upside the head for those who centered their faith not in the hand of an angry God bringing vengence, but in the reflection of Christ in the faces of those who fed the hungry, nursed the sick and comforted those who mourned.
But their right to free speech, however deeply offensive? Not much different than that of the local Klan, who also turned out on occasion to note their objections to all forms of equality. Like Phelps' pickets these days--when they actually show--back then, the Klansmen were overwhelming outnumbered by counter-protesters.
In the Queen City of the Ozarks, that more recent ratio was the poetry of long overdue bills of history, for brutality, cruelty and murder based on hatred once were embraced by the town's white majority.
To this day, the city remains disproportionately white because much of the Ozark town's once-flourishing black community had packed up and moved in 1906, following vicious lynchings of three African American men on the town square.
But over time, public sentiment had indeed changed--mostly--and the Klan used unhooded, daylight "rallies" to try to sway public opinion. Mostly. And those holding the tiny rallies--I remember fewer than a dozen Klansmen gathering-- were outnumbered by counter-protests. While the area had a violent, racist past in which whites used lynching to terrorize black people, the Klan members had a right to assemble and speak.
Make no mistake in my meaning: the Westboro pickets compare to the Klan "rallies" of the 1990s, not to the earlier lynchings--or homophobic violence like the murder of Matthew Shepard.
Demonstrations by the Klan and Westboro are the rude and ugly price for a free society.
Now the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Westboro, in a case that pitted free speech versus the pain and other damages it can cause mourners. The decision is post in a pdf here, and as much I disagree with Phelps' feral Christianity and urge readers to support actions in support of those Westboro targets, I think the court made a sound choice.
I deeply understand the pain this might cause--some friends and former students are now serving in the wars and other deployments, and if any of them were to lose their lives serving their country, I'd be ready to rip Fred Phelps' head off if he showed up at a funeral.
But I wouldn't. Self-control's not just part of being a citizen, but being an adult.
For me, the best model of both is my friend former state senator Becky Lourey, a peace activist whose eldest son Matthew died when small arms fire brought down his helicopter in Iraq. Phelps' crew didn't threaten her son's memorial service, a rawly emotional ceremony where hundreds openly wept (I was one of them), nor at the later burial in Arlington National Cemetery.
Lourey later cast the only dissenting vote for a law which forbids protests at funerals.
At the time of the vote in 2006, conservative blogger Ed Morrissey wrote in Is Becky Lourey The Last Minnesota Voice For Free Speech?:
Lourey, a DFL member who had planned on demonstrating with Cindy Sheehan before the media star left her campout in Crawford, is the only member of the Senate to understand what this ban means. Her son died in Iraq as part of an effort to bring democracy and liberty to an oppressed people, an effort Lourey opposed then and now. But she is correct in pointing out the bitter irony that Minnesota will impose speech restrictions in a heartfelt but misguided effort to honor the sacrifice of those who fought for freedom.
The law carries a ninety-day jail sentence for anyone who intentionally disrupts a memorial service or funeral. It also bars protestors from any demonstrations at the houses of the families. All of these sound reasonable, but it represents a government restriction on speech and organizing that finds no parallel elsewhere in law. . . .
Lourey had told the Star Tribune (quoted in Morrissey):
"This is very emotional because the speech we're addressing is very ugly, but we can't repeal the Bill of Rights because of it."
Protest isn't always pretty, but the response to free speech and assembly is--as those who gathered to support theater students from a threatened Westboro picket in a far, far less emotional situation in Hastings last month attest--is more free speech and assembly.
In a subsequent post, Morrissey saw recourse through tort law as one appropriate legal response; the Court threw out lower courts' agreement with that argument. While I'm sympathetic to it and the Snyder family's pain, I think the Court made the right decision.
Via the Strib, the Washington Post reports in Even hateful speech is protected that the church will probably use the decision to challenge state laws such as that passed over Lourey's objections:
Margie Phelps, the daughter of Westboro's founder, the Rev. Fred Phelps, and a lawyer who argued the case before the court, called Wednesday's decision a providential ruling that was more than she had hoped for. It could encourage the group to challenge some of the more than 40 state and federal laws that seek to protect funerals from disruption, she said.
The article quotes Justice Roberts' opinion for the majority:
While these messages may fall short of refined social or political commentary, the issues they highlight -- the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our nation, homosexuality in the military, and scandals involving the Catholic clergy -- are matters of public import.
What recourse will families have in the face of the public discussion carried on just beyond the private steps of a house of worship or funeral home? There's already the Patriot Guard Riders, motorcyclists who shield families from Phelps' ugliness when asked to do so.
And there's Hastings' style support.
And, while it won't comfort a family in mourning, raw and immediate, there's the long moral arc of history that some call justice and others, truth. The Klan in southwest Missouri had a chronic case of it in the 1990s. Recent gains for equality --and the size of Phelps' own tiny band--suggest that Fred's own funeral might deliver a bit of both to the Westboro Church.
Photos: Springfield Missouri's Park Central Square with the Gottfred Tower, undated postcard via Springfield Public Library. Three men were lynched from the tower in 1906, which was topped by a statue of Liberty; the tower was removed from the town square in 1909 (above). Becky Lourey (below).
Today's Bluestem Trivia Challenge: Two House members (one democrat, one republican) also voted against the bill. Without Internet assistance, name them...
Posted by: Nate Dybvig | Mar 04, 2011 at 09:34 AM