If it is reversed I promise that the Patriot Guard Riders will pick up where we left off. None of these cultists will be able to yell above the roar of our motorcycles and disrespect our bravest of the brave.

What’s a fag, a gay slur insult, right?( I know that Ann Coulter claims it’s simply a school yard taunt, whatever). What’s a whore in the context of what the Phelps’ are saying? These words simply don’t rise to the level of libel or slander. It could just be an opinion, digusting though it may be, or likely just brutal name calling. Could you imagine how often we’d be in court if being called nasty names was all it took to bring a libel or slander claim?

The key issue in this case is the intentional infliction of emotional distress. This is the issue that will be the key to surviving appellate review.
Their obviously can’t be a defense of satire or parody which was protected in the Hustler Magazine/Falwell case.
I just don’t see this as a libel/slander issue. This is still a close case, but if the decision survives it will be all about intentional infliction of emotional distress based on the timing, placement,
content, and setting of the disgusting taunts. I do hope the Snyders win.

I’m not. But I’m simply aware that the right to freedom of speech doesn’t include the right to freedom from the consequence of that speech.

What? Your awareness is wrong. Free speech is all about being protected from legal consequences from holding unpopular views. Otherwise you’re dealing with prior restraint and people who are unable to advance their way of thinking because they’re afraid of the consequences. That doesn’t sound very free to me.

Kevin from OH in VA,

I ignored your post because you are wrong. I am aware that libel and slander are not protected. This is neither libel nor slander. Unless you can definitively prove way or another that God does not actually hate “fags.” But I don’t think that’s something any human is capable of.

Providing me with a link to the definition of libel is unnecessary. I’m no dummy. Phelps’s clan isn’t calling Snyder gay with no proof or anything like that. Phelps is saying America and its soldiers and citizens are suffering for its “sins.” Again, you can’t prove that one way or another.

I agree that this speech could fall into the “fighting words” restrictions of free speech. However, these restrictions are extremely limited and they don’t really cover political and religious assembly. The KKK is allowed to assemble and chant whatever the Hell they want. The American Nazi Party is allowed to march in a town with one of the largest Holocaust survivor populations. (SC Case here.) Surely that’s comparable to protesting a soldier’s funeral.

Traditionally, with the exception of Hill v. CO (which was a mistake), these things are always protected.

I don’t give a rats ass about the Phelps free speech rights.

There’s the rub. They have the very same Constitution as us. Protection for some and not for all is a terrible precedent to set. This precedent could be applied to anti-choice demonstrations, military protests, and all sorts of legitimate assembly. We don’t want that, do we?

I love how you just ignored my post. I show you a picture of the libelous/slanderous actions of the Phelps cult, provide you with a dictionary definition of the word libel, and you gloss over it and continue with your free speech argument. Libel and slander are not free speech. This is not free speech. It’s cruel, disrespectful, and, most assuredly, not protected by the first amendment.

“Fag troops?” “Your Pastor is a whore?” For cryin’ out loud, God and the United States of America should get in on this lawsuit, too. According to the Westboro Baptist Church, America is a “fag nation” and God “blew up the troops,” “sent the IED’s,” and gave us the “gift” of 9-11. It sounds to me like they can stake a claim to more of the WBC’s cash.

I agree with you that he has no reason to regret what he did and that his mission did help hasten the end of the war, along with the second atomic bomb. I have always thought this and have argued it with others before. But to me it looks the headline is meant put Tibbets and his accomplishment in a bad light. I don’t know, I think the headline could have played up his heroism more or his part in ending the war.

Maybe something like this.

“Legendary WWII Pilot Dies”
“Mission helped shorten WWII″

The First Amendment gives no one the unfettered right to inflict intention emotional distress on another person. In 2003 the Supreme Court held, in Virginia vs Black, that “A State may punish those words ‘which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.’ We have consequently held that fighting words – ‘those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction’ — are generally proscribable under the Fiirst Amendment.” – Charlie T.

Now this makes for an interesting situation. I know they have ax handles in that part of Pennsylvania. So, if someone opened the side of Phelps’ head with an ax handle, that would be prima facie evidence that the speech was not protected.

I’ll leave those legal arguments to lawyers, but it would be nice if they took these peoples houses away from them. I’m sure that they could be converted into AIDS clinics and put to a useful purpose.

Great headline and why should he regret it? his mission probably saved 500K between both sides…great man, great patriot.

Really nicely put…

Michelle you need to get all over this. Paul Tibbets has died and the headline at the AOL news site is

“Legendary WWII Pilot Dies”
“Didn’t Regret Killing of 80,000″

If that is not a loaded headline I don’t know what is.

The right to free speech and assembly is one of the most powerful rights we have. Why you all so willing to dilute that?

-Rusty

I’m not. But I’m simply aware that the right to freedom of speech doesn’t include the right to freedom from the consequence of that speech. THAT is what the Phelps face. No one disrupted their freedom to say what they thought. The law happens to provide recourse to those victimized by hate speech, libel, and innumerable other types of free speech. And that’s as it should be.

A church group forcing their views on people they don’t know, in the name of their god, using the trappings of freedom to put a grieving family under duress, and then appealing a decision by a civil court to adjudicate morality- which they seem to have lost in the first place.

Get a clue, Phelps. Make your own circle strong against the perceived ravages of homosexuality. Use the spiritual tools you have either been given or usurped for yourself to do the work with your own people. That is the extent of your influence. If you want to be like Jesus and start a movement, go spend 40 days out in the desert and check out your own motivations and face your demons.

Stop washing your own dirty laundry vicariously through these “protests”.

You make me sick. Heaven will ultimately rule against what you are doing- and no amount of 2-legged lawyering is going to change that. Check the Book and say it aint so, Brother.

Peace be unto ye.

Now that is a truly selfless act.
RIP General Tibbets