Christians, not Christins. :/

I just heard about the ruling. It was correct.

If we value our right to blaspheme others, as vile as Westboro Butthead church is, the long term affect of silencing them could reach things we want to say and do ourselves. Many here remember the bunt harsh words  Hitchens gave Falwell upon his death. Many of Falwell's supporters certainly heard Hitchens and reacted negatively to Hitchens.

The fact was that Westboro at the time of the funeral protest that brought on this lawsuit, had not violated any noise laws, private property laws, or impeding motion laws. Sick and offensive, most certainly. Illegal, no.

Allowing for offensive words allows us ourselves to offend. It isn't protecting bigots this ruling is set out to protect, but the long term protection of all citizens in having the ability to dissent.

While I can understand the pain of the parents of the soldier, it is exactly what he gave his life for. We cannot institutionalize political correctness at the cost of free speech, no matter how vile someone might say.

One must always take into account that power shifts in government. The laws change, the lawmakers change, the judges change, the politicians change society changes and thus the jury pools change too. The last thing anyone on any side of an issue should do, is set others up to have the ability to silence you. You may not always be in agreement with the government you live under.

The Supreme Court WAS NOT protecting bigotry. It was protecting the concept of protecting dissent put forth in the First Amendment, as a long term goal, to protect the rights of all citizens. We cannot always force others to say nice things about us, nor should we.

Right. Laws regarding protests center around permits, noise levels, private property, and impeding the motion of others. These are regulations, not bans.

So no, Westboro could not block the funeral, or trespass onto private property, or block vehicles or pedestrians.

If we were to side with the Soldiers family, then someone punching someone for calling their mother a whore, would be legal.

It is utopia to think that hateful things should never be said. To suggest such is to potentially give the powers that be the absolute power to silence you. You take the good with the bad and use your own voice to counter things like this.

If I value my right to say, for example "Pat Robertson is dick bent on destroying America", I must allow even my most vile detractors the same. It prevents monopolies of power by allowing a dissent to keep a check on the majority.

You cannot think short term. This boils down to the long term protection of all citizens, no matter what message they are selling.

WBC is a joke and our social norms are leading away from crackpots like this.

OK Fred Phellps and his family are about as vile as vile gets. Even so, we need to consider, as others have pointed out, that silencing him has the potential to work against the general idea of letting everyone have a voice in public discourse.

Sure, nobody much likes what he has to say but we are not held captive to his ideas. We operate in a free market for ideas and his lame crap is pretty obvious.

Even so, I would urge people to read the actual ruling handed down from SCOTUS. It is telling of what happened in this case.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-751.pdf

For those not willing to do that, the nutshell version is that the family of the guy who died tried to use the courts not only to silence those assholes but also to drive them into bankruptcy. Nice thought that but it is not how the country works.

Here is what went down:

The WBC has a standard policy for their shit. Before they get started, they issue a press release and contact local police for guidelines on what they will be able to do. In this case, they were told to be at least a quarter mile away from the church (300 meters). They did this.

The guy who tried to sue them admitted in open court that he never even saw the signs apart from possibly the brightly colored tops. That much is even questionable as there were several buildings in the way of his line of view.

He did not even know that the protest had happened until he saw a mention of it on the news that night. There is not documentation of that but whatever he saw, he let it pass.

Several weeks later, he was doing a google search for his boy and he found the godhatesfags web site with a stinking diatribe over the matter. At this point, he apparently decided to sue them.

He won the first pass but lost on appeal. Then he asked the Supremes for an opinion. However, in his request, he did not mention the internet posting. Probably on the advice of his lawyer as it would be doubtful that he would get anywhere on that. Hence, he is only asking SCOTUS for an opinion on whether they would be willing to drive WBC into bankruptcy over the actual protest.

So Justice Roberts correctly observed that that is clearly not what government is in the business of doing.

I will tell everyone here now. If someone decides to protest my funeral because I am an atheist, DO NOT PREVENT THEM. Not even in distance. If the idiots obey the law and don't impede your motion and don't violate private property rights, I DONT GIVE A SHIT.

I will be dead. If you pass them or hear them on the way to the venue, that affects you, not me. I would only object if the venue itself were disrupted. Being pissed off because someone picked on me while you were trying to pay me respects is not the same as physical action.

Let anyone say what they want when I die. I will have no capability of caring. I do care that humans should not prevent bitching. I have bitched about others and they will meet the same fate as all of us will.