This is just outrageous

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Dead Marine's father ordered to pay protesters' legal costs
By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN
March 30, 2010 11:06 p.m. EDT

(CNN) -- The father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church says an order to pay the protesters' legal costs in a civil claim is nothing less than a "slap in the face."

"By the court making this decision, they're not only telling me that they're taking their side, but I have to pay them money to do this to more soldiers and their families," said Albert Snyder, whose son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, was killed in action in Iraq in 2006.

Members of the fundamentalist church based in Topeka, Kansas, appeared outside Snyder's funeral in 2006 in Westminster, Maryland, carrying signs reading "You're going to hell," "God hates you" and "Thank God for dead soldiers."

Among the teachings of the church, which was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps, is the belief that God is punishing the United States for "the sin of homosexuality" through events such as soldiers' deaths.

Margie Phelps, the daughter of Fred Phelps and the attorney representing the church in its appeals, also said the money that the church receives from Snyder will be used to finance demonstrations. But she also said that the order was a consequence of his decision to sue the church over the demonstration.

"Mr. Snyder and his attorneys have engaged the legal system; there are some rules to that legal engagement," said Phelps, a member of Westboro who says she has participated in more than 150 protests of military funerals.

"They wanted to shut down the picketing so now they're going to finance it," she said.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ordered that Snyder pay more than $16,000 in costs requested by Westboro for copies of motions, briefs and appendices, according to court documents.

In a motion filed in October, Snyder's lawyer, who is representing him for free, asked the court to dismiss the bill of costs, or, alternatively, reduce the 50-cent fee per page or charge Snyder only for copies that were necessary to make their arguments on appeal.

"We objected based upon ability to pay and the fairness of the situation," Sean Summers said.

The mostly pro-forma ruling is the latest chapter in an ongoing legal saga that pits privacy rights of grieving families against the free speech rights of demonstrators, however disturbing and provocative their message.

Snyder's family sued the church and went to trial in 2007 alleging privacy invasion, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. A jury awarded the family $2.9 million in compensatory damages plus $8 million in punitive damages, which were reduced to $5 million.

Westboro in 2008 appealed the case to the 4th District, which reversed the judgments a year later, siding with the church's claims that its First Amendment rights had been violated.

"The protest was confined to a public area under supervision and regulation of local law enforcement and did not disrupt the church service," the circuit court opinion said. "Although reasonable people may disagree about the appropriateness of the Phelps' protest, this conduct simply does not satisfy the heavy burden required for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress under Maryland law."

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case to address issues of laws designed to protect the "sanctity and dignity of memorial and funeral services" as well as the privacy of family and friends of the deceased.

The justices will be asked to address how far states and private entities such as cemeteries and churches can go to justify picket-free zones and the use of "floating buffers" to silence or restrict speech or movements of demonstrators exercising their constitutional rights in a funeral setting.

Both Phelps and Snyder's attorney said they were surprised that the 4th District chose to weigh in on the issue of legal costs when they could have waited until after the Supreme Court hearing.

Phelps believes the ruling bodes well for her side.

"It is a good harbinger of the fact that the Supreme Court will remind this nation that you don't have mob rule. The fact that so many people hate these words does not mean you can silence or penalize them. That's supposed to be the great liberty that we congratulate ourselves on protecting in this nation. We strut all around the world forcing people to give all the liberties we supposedly have," she said.

Phelps anticipated that a Supreme Court ruling in the church's favor would be unpopular, but she said Westboro's members viewed the potential outcome in Biblical terms.

"When the Supreme Court unanimously upholds the 4th Circuit, it's going to put this country in a rage, and we will be expelled," she said. "But whenever it was time for an epic event in the Bible, the thing that happened right before is the prophets were removed from the land, and that's what's going to happen to us. ... We're going to sprint to the end of this race."

Snyder claims he is unable to pay any legal costs in the case and is attempting to raise funds on his son's site, http://www.matthewsnyder.org/. He is equally optimistic that he will prevail before the Supreme Court.

"The American people keep my spirits lifted a lot and give me hope. I think most of the country is on my side on this issue," he said. "Too many people have died to protect our rights and freedoms to have them degraded and spit upon like this church does."

The fact that they do what they do then have the audacity to call themselves a church beyond words. If there's a hell then that's where they'll be going.

It would be loads of fun to facilitate they're admittance to hell sooner.

The Harley Honor Guard
By DAVID VAN BIEMA Monday, May. 01, 2006

An all too familiar dirge emanated from the bagpipes at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, Calif., last week as the coffin of Army Sergeant Joseph Blanco, who died under enemy fire in Taji, Iraq, was borne past two rows of mourners holding American flags. Blanco's pallbearers wore neatly pressed military greens. But the onlookers were hardly regulation: outfitted in leather jackets, do-rags and multiple tattoos, with nicknames like Fugdaboutit and Fat Bob, wearing patches with legends like HEAVILY MEDICATED FOR YOUR PROTECTION, they had roared in earlier by the dozens on Harleys, Hondas and more Harleys, from as near as Palm Springs, Calif., and as far as Phoenix, Ariz., to take their places as honored guests of the bereaved--and as part of an eccentric but eloquent expression of national grief over sons and daughters who gave their lives in war.

They call themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, and in a culture in which a 24-hour news cycle and habitual political spin can make the most earnest public gesture seem tired or canned, they appear to be the real thing: a spontaneous mass movement. They formed as a response to the Rev. Fred Phelps, an attention-crazed fanatic based in Topeka, Kans., who has logged 15 years as a kind of paleo-fundamentalist, gay-baiting performance artist. Last spring Phelps grabbed the already troubling line, taken by preachers such as Pat Robertson, that disasters like 9/11 were God's punishment for American sins, and spun it past the boundary of the outrageous by having his followers crash military funerals with signs like GOD LOVES IEDS (improvised explosive devices) and scream to grieving parents that their children were in hell as divine punishment for what Phelps calls the nation's "enabling" and "harboring" of homosexuals.

After more than a dozen such episodes, five American Legion Riders from Kansas decided last August that they had had enough. At subsequent funerals, they gathered fellow bikers to form a human shield between Phelps' disciples and the bereaved, blocking the protesters' signs with flags and occasionally revving their engines to drown out the insults. Soon the riders outgrew the protesters. Phelps' church has only about 75 members, mostly his relatives. But the newly named Patriot Guard expanded exponentially and today claims 28,000 bikers and supporters. They attend every single military funeral for which the family gives permission. "We joined because of Fred Phelps, but now the whole focus is off Fred Phelps," says California state coordinator Cheryl Egan. "It's more about the troop who just gave his or her life."

And about a unique coalescing of needs and remedies. Some of the riders are grizzled Vietnam vets looking for closure. "They didn't get thanked for their service," says Gus Quist, the leader of the group at Captain Ian Weikel's funeral in Colorado Springs, Colo., last week, "and we want to say thank you to this next generation." Others are hobbyists a generation younger and simply happy to pay respects. The group is strictly culture-war neutral. Notes Patriot Guard California state ride captain David (Scooter) Bolton: "Nobody cares if [a rider is] gay or not. It's not a meet-and-greet-and-date organization. It's to honor fallen heroes."

In addition to the Guard, Phelps' antics provoked anti-funeral-demonstration legislation, passed in nine states and proposed in more than 12 others and in Congress. Most of the laws establish a protest-free buffer of several hundred feet around memorial services. Civil libertarians say such statutes are vulnerable to challenge, especially since a Supreme Court decision in 2000 allotted only an 8-ft. buffer around anyone entering protested abortion clinics. David Hudson of Washington's First Amendment Center argues that the bikers' vroom trumps clearing room. Paraphrasing former Justice Louis Brandeis, Hudson says, "The remedy is more speech, not enforced silence."

David Weikel is certainly thankful that the Patriot Guard spoke up. He was warned that Phelps' supporters might show up at his son Ian's funeral in Colorado Springs. "What a hateful group of people," says Weikel, a former pastor. In the end, Phelps' people were absent, but the bikers showed up. "I love them deeply," Weikel says, adding a sentiment not often applied to the hog-and-leathers set: "I appreciate their ministry in my life."

Better be careful what you say online, lest you receive a visit from the FBI.