Son's Funeral Has Become a First Amendment Issue
Win or lose, picketing preacher Fred Phelps says he’ll get what he wants when the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether the First Amendment protects his tiny flock’s demonstrations outside slain soldiers’ funerals. His Kansas congregation complains that America has reached the brink of destruction by increased tolerance of gays in the military and national life.
Phelps already has provoked outrage for years by toting signs crammed with gay-baiting slurs to services for dead soldiers. He sees the Supreme Court case as the mother lode.
“Can you think of a better way to get free publicity?” asks Phelps, a disbarred lawyer and founder of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka. “This thing at the Supreme Court is worth millions. We’re on top of the pyramid now.”
But while Phelps says free speech is on his side, Al Snyder says Phelps’ presence near his son’s 2006 funeral disrupted his First Amendment right to freely exercise his religion. His son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, 20, was killed on March 3, 2006, in a vehicle crash while serving in Iraq.
Continue reading “Grave Encounters” in the October edition of the ABA Journal.
