Opinion

Free speech for fruitcakes

When it comes to repugnant, it’s hard to beat the reptiles of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.

But in America, repugnance is no barrier to the conversation, a point affirmed yesterday by the US Supreme Court in a big win for First Amendment rights.

The high court sided 8-1 with Westboro and its right to picket funerals of slain military personnel.

The church preaches that combat deaths are God’s punishment for America’s tolerant views on homosexual rights — and members picket funerals bearing signs that read “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

When Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder was killed in 2006, the road show rolled into his Maryland hometown to pull the same stunt. An understandably furious Albert Snyder, the Marine’s father, sued for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of distress.

After winning a jury verdict in a Maryland court, Snyder lost on appeal.

In upholding that ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the Westboro group had a right to disgrace itself: “Debate on public issues should be robust, uninhibited and wide-open [and] . . . speech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”

There’s no small irony in the fact that Cpl. Snyder gave his life in service of the First Amendment — honoring the oath he took to uphold the US Constitution.

Honor is not something that Westboro and its fruitcake pastor, Fred Phelps, would, or even could, understand.

But the court got it, and did right by young Snyder’s sacrifice.