Dear editor,
Regarding Gary Huerta’s column (A Balcony View: Comparing Falwell, Westboro cases, 4/5) about our faithful street testimony to this rebellious nation, he should stick to writing what he knows.
The quote from the United States Supreme Court about shouting fire in a theater is that you can’t falsely shout fire in a theater. If the theater is on fire you’d better speak up – or just admit you’re a selfish brute!
Misleading people about this rule of law is not a good idea.
A captive audience as a matter of law requires that the speaker be in close proximity. In this case, the faithless father did not see or hear our picketers as they stood over a thousand feet away – nor did anyone else going into that funeral. They had the full idolatrous funeral worship as planned. There were two large groups of other protesters immediately outside the church and down the road, by the scores. It was a large noisy public event. No one was a captive audience and nothing was disrupted. Our picketers left before the funeral started.
You columnists purposefully distort the facts because you can’t just admit that you hate the words. Because if you wage war on the courts to make them shut up our words – you know you could be next. The simple fact is that everyone in this nation is talking about these dying soldiers.
No one but us is saying STOP SINNING AND THEY’LL STOP DYING.
Whether you like our viewpoint or not – our words are on vitally important public issues, and they are lawfully and peacefully delivered.
Doomed-american faithless fathers and big-mouthed columnists don’t want to admit that your unrelenting proud sin is the cause of these soldiers dying. You’ve raised whole generations to fornicate by 14; divorce/remarry and otherwise change spouses/sex partners more often than socks; and if a baby gets made in the process, just kill it. You have gorged young people on homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and idolatry. You sent these kids to the battlefield without a moral compass, and put them in the cross hairs of a raging angry God.
Just admit you hate those words! You can’t refute them from the Bible or the facts on the ground. So you figure you can mock, pressure, and rage against the courts and get them to shut us up – pretending there is some exception in the law that fits our words, that wouldn’t equally fit yours. Balderdash! All of the law – 100% – is on our side. But you’re prepared to uproot all that law, and shred to tatters the gift God gave this nation called the First Amendment. Just so you can keep sinning!
Shame on you! You disserve your readers, this nation, the constitution you claim to love, and God!
The rule of law in Falwell is that true words cannot be penalized because someone claims they got their feelings hurt! The faithless father sued us for defamation – and the trial court threw the claim out – because there was no basis for it! Our words are true as a matter of law. That rule of law applies here directly, and it means the judges were right when they set the verdict aside. Besides – talk about un-american – you crybaby grown men trying to shut people down because you got your little feeeeee-liiiiiiings hurt! Man up for God’s sake! Stop trying to penalize words because they hurt your conscience. The fix is to obey God, not keep browbeating us to shut up or courts to make us.
It’s too late for the dead soldiers. It’ll soon be too late for this nation. Your doom is imminent. You should have obeyed!
Answering:
A Balcony View
Comparing Falwell, Westboro cases
There are a lot of reasons why I am glad I live in Glendale. Most of them have to do with what is is here rather than what isn’t. Lately, I’ve been grateful to live here because it’s far, far away from Topeka, Kan., – home of the Westboro Baptist Church. In fact, that reason is quickly rising to the top of my own list.
I often grapple with what to cover, especially when it borders on the extremely negative. I’ve often been critical of the press for giving life and credibility to individuals like Ann Coulter, whose sole purpose on Earth seems only to provide inane sound bites that no rational person would pay attention to if it weren’t for the fact that in their outrageous nature, they attract ratings.
People like Coulter and groups like the Westboro Baptist Church create the cliche chicken-egg argument – is it the media’s fault for putting it on the air, or is it the public’s fault for swallowing it up like bloated contestants at a hot-dog-eating contest?
For those unaware, protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church have regularly protested and disrupted military funerals since 2001. It is their opinion that troops’ deaths are God’s way of punishing America for condoning homosexuality. They stand outside funerals with signs, shouting slogans like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “Thank God for IEDs.”
Led by founder Fred Phelps, the church believes God kills U.S. troops as punishment for the country’s acceptance of homosexuality and abortion. The sad irony is that the fallen, whose funerals they protest, died defending their constitutional right to express those beliefs.
It is these rights of free speech that are being questioned by the Supreme Court. Albert Snyder, father of deceased Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, has argued in court that the church’s right to free speech does not supersede the rights of mourners to lay their family members to rest without facing an insulting public protest.
In 2006, Snyder sued the Westboro church for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit also claimed that the church invaded the Snyders’ privacy because its members “intentionally entered upon the solitude and seclusion of the plaintiff and his family members,” and “intruded upon the plaintiff’s private affairs and concerns.” Finally, he claimed that the church meant to harm him and his family emotionally.
The church countered that its members did not intend to cause emotional distress because their protest was kept 1,000 feet away. The jury didn’t agree and found in Snyder’s favor, awarding him $10.9 million in damages.
But anyone familiar with the court system knows the first verdict is never the last. The church appealed the decision twice, most recently with a three-judge panel in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
As a result, the Snyder family must pay the church’s $16,510 in legal fees. Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly agreed to cover the costs, saying it was obvious “those cranks at Westboro were intentionally trying to hurt Mr. Snyder and his family.” This may be the only time O’Reilly and I have agreed on anything!
In writing this column, I was reminded of another famous 1st Amendment case that addressed defamation and emotional distress: Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine Inc. versus televangelist Jerry Falwell. In it, the Supreme Court ruled that Falwell could not collect emotional damages from the publication because he was a well-known public figure.
Unlike Falwell, Snyder is asking the Supreme Court to review whether the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was correct in protecting the church’s right to free speech if it attacked a private figure during a private matter.
For me, this is the distinct difference between the Flynt-Falwell case and the Snyder-Westboro matter. Issues of taste aside, the fictional parody printed by Hustler magazine was distributed in a manner where a person, even Falwell, could avoid the parody by not buying it.
Conversely, in the Snyder case, the participants of the funeral were a “captive audience.” They had nowhere to escape the church’s hateful, disgusting comments, and had no choice but to endure it at a time of grief and mourning.
While I do believe in free speech, I also have a firm belief in common sense. The two must coexist. One cannot run into a crowded arena and yell “fire” and claim it is their 1st Amendment right to do so. One should also not be allowed to disrupt the private matters of others and claim the Constitution gives them that right.