Anti-gay church wins round in courtProtest outside Marine's funeral called protected speech
By Nicole Fuller | nicole.fuller@baltsun.com
September 25, 2009
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a fundamentalist Kansas church's protest outside the funeral of a Westminster Marine killed in Iraq is protected speech and did not violate the privacy of the service member's family, reversing a lower court's $5 million award.
The ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., held that the signs and writings of the Westboro Baptist Church, which included anti-gay and anti-military messages, are protected by the First Amendment. The Topeka-based congregation has protested at military funerals across the country
"Notwithstanding the distasteful and repugnant nature of the words being challenged in these proceedings, we are constrained to conclude that the defendants' signs and [what it has on its Web sites] are constitutionally protected," Circuit Court Judge Robert B. King wrote in the majority opinion.
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The First Amendment does NOT give the right to trample on someone else's right, like a funeral. Let's hope the whackos at WBC lose and have to cough up that money. Fred Phelps and inbred freaks should be out of the gene pool.
