The Decision

I cannot let this go by without a post.  I was not surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision, on the "Westboro Baptist" case, 8-1 even, because of their past defenses of free speech.  Good for them in standing by the principle.  I often disagree with them, but they usually get it right on this issue.

Of course, it is obligatory to say that the cult involved in this dispute is detestable, horrible, mean, nasty, vile, etc.  No one is going to contest that point.  But I think we aren’t looking a little deeper.  Why do we think they are so bad?  There are probably three reasons:

The first is that they interfere with the grief of families who are burying their sons (and perhaps daughters—I focus on sons because the Pentagon has a policy that women are not put in direct combat, but if a daughter is involved, I apologize).  That is enough of a reason to detest these people, who are really only a handful.  Thankfully, some veterans groups are uniting to protect these families.

The second is that they have chosen to put Baptist on their name as well as church.  One could say we Christians don’t like the bad press.  But it’s more than that.  They do not represent the rest of us, yet the media wants to act like they do.  99.999999% of Christians are appalled by their actions.  Why isn’t the media out there showing all the Christians building wells in Africa, feeding the hungry, educating the poor?  Not as sexy as nutcases at a funeral with nasty signs.

By the way, I know Baptists can be the foil of a lot of jokes, and we have our quirks, but I would remind folks that Dr. King was a Baptist, as is Jimmy Carter.  Baptist is a very broad title.

Baptists were persecuted in the early colonial period, and we are very thankful for the First Amendment. We and other Christians know that free speech must be protected no matter what, because we will be among the first to lose it.  When people say, “I am so appalled by this decision I want to move to another country,” I can only ask, “and where would that be?  What other country is going to protect your rights to be who and what you are?”

The third reason people might be upset about this decision is that it seems to be a defense of “hate speech.”  I can understand that, especially if someone feels he or she is in a group that has been the brunt of “hate speech” or “hate crimes.”  However, one person’s hate speech is another person’s conviction.  There are Supreme Court decisions that protect against inciting to violence when it’s likely to happen, and this is clearly not one of those, since the place and audience of their hateful speech is highly unlikely to affect anyone.  Their position is not that homosexuality is immoral; that is held by many people (let me add by the vast majority of Muslims, although you never hear that about them).  The  “position” of Westboro cultists is that American soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan because the U.S. has condoned and allowed homosexuality, that America is being judged in the deaths of these young people who are serving us.  So their “hate speech” is not just against homosexuals (although clearly it is) but against the soldiers, the government, and indirectly the family members of the deceased.

The issue of “hate speech” is more nuanced than I want to get into here; I am just saying that it is one of the reasons why people are angry about the decision.  Neither am I saying people should not be upset about these people and what they are doing; of course we all are, although again I think the media is misinterpreting it and giving it too much play.

In closing, as a college teacher I think there are certain texts that everyone should read before they are handed a degree, no matter how dense the texts are.  One is King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”  Another is the Bible, but that’s not going to happen in a secular college.  Another is Hamlet, as well as Antigone.  Tocqueville’s work, at least part of it, should be in there, with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and probably the Federalist Papers.  But I would also insist on the much forgotten Aereopagitica by John Milton, a foundation to our constitution and free speech.