Speaking freely

Last week, the Supreme Court confirmed the right of Westboro Baptist Church to protest at the funerals of military personnel. I’m not going to dignify them with a picture here, but their general message is that American soldiers are dying because America is giving gays more and more rights. (Personally, it looks to me like American soldiers are dying because we are sending them into war zones. But that’s just me.) We all know that this group is abhorrent, and we all condemn their activities. However, the Supreme Court made the right decision here.

I think this is yet another fundamental difference between right and left. All of my liberal friends (at least those who have voiced an opinion) feel the same way that I do. We find this group a bunch of deplorable fanatics, but we also realize that they have the right to have their little protests and voice their strange and nauseating opinions. We despise them, but we know that free speech applies to them as much as it applies to the progressive protesters in Wisconsin, Indiana, and all across the country.

Palin weighed in immediately with a tweet:

Common sense & decency absent as wacko "church" allowed hate msgs spewed@ soldiers' funerals but we can't invoke God's name in public square.

If you can weed through her own special brand of word salad, it would seem that she is against the Supreme Court’s ruling. (Hey, Palin finally found a Supreme Court ruling that she disagrees with!) First of all, she’s quite wrong about not being able to invoke God’s name in the public square. She can stand on whatever street corner she wants and “spew” her godly message. She has that right, just as the Westboro bizarros can stand on a street corner (as long as they are at least 1,000 feet away from where the service is being conducted) and conduct their protests. She was called on this, of course, with people saying that she didn’t comprehend the full scope of free speech. She backtracked a bit then:

Obviously my comment meant that when we’re told we can’t say ‘God bless you’ in graduation speeches or pray before a local football game but these wackos can invoke God’s name in their hate speech while picketing our military funerals, it shows ridiculous inconsistency. I wasn’t calling for any limit on free speech, and it’s a shame some folks tried to twist my comment in that way. I was simply pointing out the irony of an often selective interpretation of free speech rights.

Well, thank you for confirming that you don’t comprehend the full scope of free speech, lady. The reason you can’t say ‘God bless you’ in a graduation speech or pray before a local football game (at least at a public school) is because of that other little thing about separation of church and state. Remember that? The government shall promote no religion. You most definitely were calling for a limit on free speech, because you were saying that a “common sense” and “decent” verdict from the Supreme Court would have stopped this group from their protests. The Supreme Court wasn’t applying “selective interpretation” of free speech rights; that was what YOU were doing.

Believe me, I have no love for the Westboro Baptists, and that is on many levels. Their religious fanaticism, their condemnation of gays, their willingness to invade the privacy of grieving families...they truly are an ignorant and hateful bunch, and I find them disgusting. However, I also realize that they are within their rights to gather and protest. Every time they do this, they confirm their sheer loathsomeness, and they are bringing no one to their side. NO ONE. If their goal is to turn the nation back to God, and bring people to “salvation,” they are failing miserably. So they can keep up their little protests. Maybe it will provide an object lesson to everyone about extremism in the religious community. I hope that good people will do what they can to shield grieving families from the hate exhibited by these people.

Free speech is for everyone. Even a quittiot: a quittin’ idiot with a Twitter account.