Phelps takes his turn at making Kansas look bad

opinions

June 1, 2010 - 12:00 AM

Kansas will be in the national news again come fall. That’s when the United States Supreme Court will consider whether Fred Phelps and his family have the right to carry obnoxious signs at the funerals of servicemen — or anyone else — saying “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “Semper Fi Fags,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “Priests Rape Boys.”
Phelps heads the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka. Its membership doesn’t extend much beyond the Phelps family. Maybe it serves primarily as a tax dodge.
The case comes before the high court because the Albert Snyder family of York, Pa. sued Phelps for picketing the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq. A lower court jury awarded Snyder $10 million, but the award was later overturned with a ruling that the constitution protected Phelps’s right to be obnoxious. The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal.
Kansas Attorney General Steve Six has filed a friend-of-the-court brief siding with Snyder. All but two of the 50 states have signed on with Six.
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid of Nevada and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky held a news conference with Snyder to announce that 42 members of the U.S. Senate had signed on to another friend-of-the-court brief condemning Phelps, et al.
“Respondents were and are free to convey their repugnant message in virtually any public manner they choose,” the senators said in a brief written by former Clinton administration counsel Walter E. Dellinger III. “But they were not free to hijack petitioners’ private funerals as a vehicle for expression of their own hate.”

AFTER SUFFERING through a couple of years of world-wide ridicule brought on by a State Board of Education determined to take public education back to the days before Darwin and today’s understanding of geology and the origin of the universe, Kansas doesn’t deserve this.
Now we are being branded as the home of hate-filled bigots as well.
Unfortunately, the court may not come to our aid.
Phelps, like the anti-war flag-burners of the ’60s, has the First Amendment to hide behind. No matter how repugnant flag-burning or funeral picketing is — an overwhelming majority of us would vote to outlaw both — they are political speech. The anti-war demonstrators wanted the U.S. out of Vietnam. Phelps wants government to persecute homosexuals — and chooses to get his message before the most people in the most dramatic way possible by picketing the funerals of service- men and women killed in action.
He and his placard carriers also trample on U.S. flags and sing disrespectful parodies of patriotic songs. They do all they can to get news coverage short of actions that will land them in jail.
So what can Kansas do — that’s legal and moral — about Phelps?
Ignore him. What he wants most is headlines and spoken outrage.  When he can’t be ignored, laugh. The man and his minions are but caricatures of political activists. They are, in political-speak, empty suits. When you see them — and you will if you attend almost any event at our state universities — point and giggle.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

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