The Supreme Court just ruled 8-1 that a fringe cult that calls itself the "Westboro Baptist Church" has a First Amendment right to use funerals (of soldiers who died serving their country) to protest.
The fringe cult calling itself Westboro Baptist (a small congregation consisting of close, and possibly incestuous, relatives of Fred Phelpsl, who calls himself a pastor) first became famous by protesting gay rights events with revolting signs suggesting that God hates gay people. (They used another offensive terms as well).
These ugly signs proved irresistible to reporters from the New York Times etc., who like to pretend this sentiment captures religious conservatives' views generally.
Eventually even the New York Times and the other MSM came to realize they were photographing the same small band of people over and over again. So Fred Phelps, in his desperate search to feel important, switched to protesting the funerals of soldiers who died serving their country.
Only Justice Sam Alito had the common sense to recognize that somewhere in our great Constitution, there has to be a way to let people bury their dead, without becoming the objects of other people's monomaniacal desire to disrupt their grieving for publicity purposes.
(Perhaps we could make an exception for state funerals.)
Burials happen in public (we don't actually let people bury their dead on their own property any more). But they are not public events.
These regulations designed to circumvent Fred Phelps' evil and irrational plans, are not directed at the content of speech, they are reasonable time and place restrictions that any decent society should respect.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
