Free Speech Update

For those of you who followed my recent post on the Westboro Baptist Church and freedom of speech, today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Westboro Baptists in the suit brought against them by Albert Snyder for picketing the funeral of his son Matthew, a US Marine who died in Iraq’s Anbar Province. Judge Alito was the lone dissenter. 21 news organizations joined other groups in urging the court to find in the Church's favor. Read about it here.

This is great news. While many will question the Court's wisdom in defending the rights of an organization who admittedly compounded the grief of someone, and whose "speech" amounts to hateful anti-gay slurs and psycho-religious idiocy, I stand with people like Noam Chomsky who once wrote, "it is precisely in the case of horrendous ideas that the right of free expression must be most vigorously defended; it is easy enough to defend free expression for those who require no such defense."