Westboro Baptist Church or Current Controversial Topic Essay

Westboro Baptist Church or Current Controversial Topic - Essay Example Later, in his testimony during the court case about the WBC’s deplorable actions—actions that should be stopped by community action and by legislation—Snyder stated, â€Å""They turned this funeral into a media circus and they wanted to hurt my family. They wanted their message heard and they didn't care who they stepped over. My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside† (â€Å"Father† n.p.). The Westboro Baptist Church, located in Topeka, Kansas, has been protesting at funerals since 1991. As of 2009, they claim to have participated in over 41,000 protests in over 650 cities, and spend an average of $250,000 a year on picketing. They travel all over the U.S. to picket the funerals of anyone associated with gay people. For example, they picketed at the 1998 funeral of murder victim Matthew Shepherd and the 2010 funeral of Elizabeth Edwards because she supported gay people (Borger n.p.). The WBC also protests at funerals of slain military personnel like Snyder’s.Why would the WBC participate in such activities—activities that even Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly calls â€Å"evil and despicable† (Cohen n.p.)? ... They picket at funerals to express their views, and to get the word out about their opposition to gay rights, the Catholic Church, Jews, and other topics. They believe that anyone who is opposed to their way of seeing things is going to hell, and they feel compelled to make sure that people know this. Several weeks after Matthew Snyder’s funeral, for example, the WBC denounced Snyder’s family for raising their son Catholic. There have been many responses to their actions. One of these is through the courts, which is what the Snyder family did. Later in 2007, they sued Fred Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church, and two of Phelps’ daughters on several legal grounds, including defamation and invasion of privacy. The suit claimed that Phelps’ religious views did not expose the Snyders to public hatred or scorn. The WBC’s main defense, in addition to exercising their constitutional right to free speech and free assembly, was that they had complied with al l local ordinances regarding picketing and had obeyed all police instructions. The picket occurred 1000 feet from the funeral site, in a location cordoned off by the police, and could neither be seen or heard by the funeral participants. The judge, in his instructions to the jury, said that they needed to decide â€Å"whether the defendant's actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection† (Donaldson-Evans n.p.). This is the crux of the argument against the WBC, and perhaps explains the outcome of the case: the jury awarded Albert Snyder almost $3 million in punitive damages for invasion