On March 2, the Supreme Court ruled that the Westboro Baptist Church, the church that promotes hatred of gays and protests military funerals and other events, had the free speech right to protest with their hate-speech, no matter how harmful it is to grieving families. The Court said the church had a right to promote broad-based public matters.
The way I see it, the Court upheld the rights of lunatics without a rational message to insult and denigrate our bravest Americans and their families — and in an 8-1 opinion too.
In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and, as it did here, inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.”
I’m not a law expert, but that is fundamentally wrong. If we told these lunatics not to protest in front of funerals, we would not be punishing them in any way. However, by allowing them to protest, the court is essentially punishing the families of fallen soldiers. That’s not right.
The justices also ruled that silencing these protesters would stifle public discourse and debate. That is also wrong. If these clowns wanted to stand in a park all day and do what they do, contributing no real debate and inciting social riffs, we have to allow that.
But this is different. This is a funeral; a military funeral. This is the one opportunity for a family to say goodbye to their son or daughter. They deserve that right to do it unhindered. The Court has never addressed issues of dignity at a memorial service, but it’s time they did. It’s time to concede the fact that free speech needs to be curbed in instances of grieving and death. It would be the same if anti-war protesters were doing this.
Shame on the Supreme Court for allowing this nonsense to persist. Shame on the lawyers who defended this church in the name of free speech. Shame on the Westboro Baptist Church for spreading a message of pure hate. They will realize how wrong they are. If not by us, then by a higher power.

Paul Gaus is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences