Court to rule in military funeral protest case

danarhea said:

You know, I just had a thought. If the lawsuit against Phelps is defeated in the Supreme Court, it could be the beginning of an excellent way to pay him and his klan back.

Every time someone in Phelps' church dies, get about 10,000 people to picket the funeral with signs that say "God Hates False Prophets", "God Loves Dead Phelpses", and "This Dead Phelps Douchebag is Going Straight to Hell". Totally outnumber these assholes and shove their own tactics right down their throats. Make sure to televise it too, and let the whole world see what America thinks of these scum.

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danarhea said:

OK, so this is going to be about free speech. No problem, except that some people don't seem to get it that, with rights, come responsibilities. You must be familiar with the notion that free speech does not grant one to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. What the Supremes will be deciding will be the extent of limitations involved in free speech. Does it give Fred Phelps the right to invade the privacy of others, and disrupt the grieving of families during funerals with this.................?

Here is the deal, folks. God gives us the right of freedom of speech, but that does not mean that we can trample the rights of others in the process. Phelps and his klan can rant all day about whether or not "God hates fags". However, when they disrupt the funerals of soldiers, they have crossed the line, and I hope that the family of the dead soldier these punks protested gets every dime from them.

Finally, in the picture, Mrs. Phelps is right about one thing, although I am sure she didn't intend it. Yes, I thank God every day for dead soldiers, because without those who spilled their blood to defend us, there would be no United States of America. However, unlike Mrs. Phelps, I thank those soldiers, both straight and gay, who made the ultimate sacrifice, and gave their last measure, to keep America a free nation. We all die, eventually, and I believe that our rewards in the afterlife are commensurate with how we lived our lives. In that context, I truly believe that it sucks to be part of the Phelps klan, who (IMHO) will be enshrined in everlasting shame, once they leave this world.

Article is here.

EDIT: Check out the picture, and see how patriotic Mrs. Phelps is, with her desecration of the flag. She is a disgusting excuse for a human being, and a waste of good oxygen.

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danarhea said:

You know, I just had a thought. If the lawsuit against Phelps is defeated in the Supreme Court, it could be the beginning of an excellent way to pay him and his klan back.

Every time someone in Phelps' church dies, get about 10,000 people to picket the funeral with signs that say "God Hates False Prophets", "God Loves Dead Phelpses", and "This Dead Phelps Douchebag is Going Straight to Hell". Totally outnumber these assholes and shove their own tactics right down their throats. Make sure to televise it too, and let the whole world see what America thinks of these scum.

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roguenuke said:

I don't think either of those cases really covers this situation. In both NYT v Sullivan and Hustler v. Falwell, the cases were based on the lies were protected because they didn't maliciously go out to harm the person they were about. Both had to do with something being written about someone that wasn't true, but was not done out of malice, just greed.

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This case presents us with a novel question involving First Amendment limitations upon a State's authority to protect its citizens from the intentional infliction of emotional distress. We must decide whether a public figure may recover damages for emotional harm caused by the publication of an ad parody offensive to him, and doubtless gross and repugnant in the eyes of most. Respondent would have us find that a State's interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is sufficient to deny First Amendment protection to speech that is patently offensive and is intended to inflict emotional injury, even when that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved. This we decline to do.

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Respondent argues, however, that a different standard should apply in this case because, here, the State seeks to prevent not reputational damage, but the severe emotional distress suffered by the person who is the subject of an offensive publication. In respondent's view, and in the view of the [p53] Court of Appeals, so long as the utterance was intended to inflict emotional distress, was outrageous, and did in fact inflict serious emotional distress, it is of no constitutional import whether the statement was a fact or an opinion, or whether it was true or false. It is the intent to cause injury that is the gravamen of the tort, and the State's interest in preventing emotional harm simply outweighs whatever interest a speaker may have in speech of this type.

Generally speaking, the law does not regard the intent to inflict emotional distress as one which should receive much solicitude, and it is quite understandable that most, if not all, jurisdictions have chosen to make it civilly culpable where the conduct in question is sufficiently "outrageous." But in the world of debate about public affairs, many things done with motives that are less than admirable are protected by the First Amendment. In Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964), we held that, even when a speaker or writer is motivated by hatred or ill-will, his expression was protected by the First Amendment:

Debate on public issues will not be uninhibited if the speaker must run the risk that it will be proved in court that he spoke out of hatred; even if he did speak out of hatred, utterances honestly believed contribute to the free interchange of ideas and the ascertainment of truth.

Id. at 73. Thus, while such a bad motive may be deemed controlling for purposes of tort liability in other areas of the law, we think the First Amendment prohibits such a result in the area of public debate about public figures.

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We conclude that public figures and public officials may not recover for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of publications such as the one here at issue without showing, in addition, that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with "actual malice," i.e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true.

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RightinNYC said:

That's actually the reverse of what Hustler said. In that case, the court explicitly noted that there was "malice" (in the colloquial sense, not the libel sense), but that there was no falsehood. Even if the plaintiff showed intent to cause harm, he would also have to show that the statement was false, and it's precisely because nothing in the Hustler case was a demonstrably false statement that Flynt won.



Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell

Because nothing in this case is a demonstrably false statement about the soldier in question, the issue before the court is primarily whether Hustler should apply in this context, where it's a private figure being discussed rather than a public one.

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Charles Martel said:

Really? So vulgar language cannot be oppressed for example? Can you walk into a restaurant and bleep away at the crowded room?

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Charles Martel said:

Is there any greater or more honorable peace to disturb than a grieving family burying a son or daughter who has died for their country?

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Charles Martel said:

You cannot walk around DC with a sign that says I hate "fill in the blank." It's called responsibility and the law should shackle your arse and remove you from the scene. We don't allow atrocious racism with n word signs or signs I've seen in the South as a child depicting black men hanging from trees.

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Charles Martel said:

We find it offensive for anyone to fly the rebel flag of the Confederacy, we protect our flags....we need to protect the honor of our fighting men and women and allow them to bury their children. If there ain't already a law, there should be one, free speech is one thing, yelling fire in a crowded church quite another.

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danarhea said:

You know, I just had a thought. If the lawsuit against Phelps is defeated in the Supreme Court, it could be the beginning of an excellent way to pay him and his klan back.

Every time someone in Phelps' church dies, get about 10,000 people to picket the funeral with signs that say "God Hates False Prophets", "God Loves Dead Phelpses", and "This Dead Phelps Douchebag is Going Straight to Hell". Totally outnumber these assholes and shove their own tactics right down their throats. Make sure to televise it too, and let the whole world see what America thinks of these scum.

Click to expand...