I love my daughter. I can hardly think about her without drumming up recent images of her riding her favorite horse, or more distant images of her tiny, tiny form looking so inquisitively at me as I held her in my arms just days after her birth. I'm always smiling when I think of that.
She's eight years old now. She's got her whole life before her. She can be, well, she can do whatever she damn-well pleases, and as long as I can lift a finger, I will secure for her every available opportunity to do so, normal parenting responsibilities, of course, aside. I would defend her with every fiber of my being, and with my life. Failing that, she will receive her Rites and we will say our last goodbyes to her in accordance with the Catholic Faith, and in a Catholic Church.
At this point in time, it is not fashionable for Fred Phelps and Co. (I
simply refuse to call them a church) to have their little attention-getting sessions at the funerals of little girls. Calling out the grieving families of fallen Marines seems to be the Thing du Jour, and so, theoretically, a service for my daughter would go uninterrupted by their shenanigans.
Given recent events, though, what would stop them?
Every time I think of these morons, I am filled with hate. When I hear of them picketing a funeral, it is my sincerest hope that the next thing I hear about is the lot of them getting their asses kicked, or mowed down in a hail of gunfire. I know that it is would be both morally and legally wrong for that to happen, and I know that it is morally wrong for me to wish those things on other people. While I am Catholic and Libertarian, I am first human, and it is largely a human trait to imagine oneself in another's shoes. I cannot imagine the pain of having to bury my daughter, but I can certainly imagine the pain I would willingly inflict on a group of shitheads trying to make a publicity stunt out of my daughter's funeral.
SCOTUS says the government offers me no protection from Phelps and Co.*, and that I cannot recover damages pursuant to an
IIED tort**. Sadly, that same government will fall with its full weight on me when I visit extreme, depraved violence on them.
Something just doesn't add up here.
Through the eyeholes in my Wookie Suit, I can plainly see the First Amendment implications of the
Phelps decision had it gone a full pendulum's swing the other direction. I'm not saying the .gov should disallow Phelps and Co. from holding signs. But even through my Wookie Suit, I couldn't ignore the details of
Justice Alito's dissent. This was more than holding signs across the street from a church. This was a direct personal attack on the family of a fallen Marine, designed to be as outrageous as humanly possible for the purpose of attracting attention. Despicable is far too polite a word. Frankly, the only word I can think of for these people is 'target.'
I thought SCOTUS did the right thing until I read the dissent. I don't think that anymore. I'm not saying I know what the right answer is,
but I know this one is wrong.
tweaker
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*Of course, they cannot trespass on Church property. That helped a lot, didn't it.
**The linked Wiki article notes an example where the defendant could, despite the having the knowledge, tell the plaintiff he doesn't know where the plaintiff's kidnapped child is. Outside of a similar argument, Snyder v. Phelps effectively renders the remaining possible uses of the tort useless.
