Delftsman

Phelps Phucked

FINALLY ! A military family finally took the bull by the horns and used the courts to send a message to the hateful morons of the Westboro Baptist "Church" and let it be known that they wouldn't take the members of this so called church publically
disrupting their private grief without paying a price.

There are some commenters at Hot Air that decry the ruling against the Phelps as being a case of being a bad first step on the slippery slope towards making unpopular public speech actionable.

But does it really do this? The Phelps clan certainly have an unpopular view, but I think that the venue is what makes their speech actionable, not the speech itself. Funerals are not really public events to be disrupted by anyone wanting to get their name in the news, or at least, they shouldn't be.

The commenters at Hot Air say that the problem thay have is that the standard of what constitutes actionable speech is "too arbitrary" and "drawn differently for different people", and they are correct in that the standards ARE different in different circumstances.

Unpopular, especially radicaly unpopular speech, should be protected in the public arena without fear of legal censure. BUT with that right of public free speech comes responsibility. The courts have long held that you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater without bearing a responsibllity for the consequences.

I believe that we can all agree that private funerals really aren't the correct venue for the type of antics that the Phelps clan seem to like to perform to bring publicity to their political/religious views.

I hope that Snyder family does receive a just recompense for the emotional pain that the Phelps tribe inflicted on them, not because they deserve cash for their grief, but because it seems that with some groups, only monitary pain can provide the common sense decency they otherwise seem to lack.