The Odious Westboro Baptist Church

"As a nation we have chosen a different course - to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate". Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Well, that's a huge relief then. The honoured and honourable core principle of free speech in the United States - that exemplar nation dedicated to the protection of peoples' right under the country's constitution to free speech - remains safely enshrined. There is no form of speech, however the extent of pure viperous hatred expounded, that can be prosecuted in the highest courts of the land.

Which means that the redoubtable Reverend Fred Phelps and his execrable family are excused from compassion and civility, and they may henceforth go with virtuous glad heart to continue their ministry of contempt and hatred throughout the United States. With the occasional incursion into that country's neighbour, as well.

Since Canada is the original fount of accepting compassion in the view that human love is not exclusive, that two individuals of the same gender may conceive a great and lasting and deep love for one another, and that too is to be equally honoured with heterosexual pairing. We must, perforce, be held in the same kind of pernicious contempt as a degraded society.

It gives one some comfort that the sole dissenting justice, Samuel Alito, wrote that his nation's commitment to free and open debate should not be interpreted as a free-for-all in distributing rancid hatred and divisiveness among people, that free speech

"is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case. Respondents' outrageous conduct caused petitioner great injury, and the court now compounds that injury by depriving petitioner of a judgement that acknowledges the wrong he suffered."

"This case" being the military funeral of a young American soldier, whose body had been returned from a conflict zone in Iraq and whose father, Albert Snyder, took pained offence at the raucous circus that was inflicted on his beloved son's funeral. Causing him to take the Westboro Baptist Church and its protesting members to court to sue for emotional distress.

It would appear now that Mr. Snyder must live with his distress, without recourse to the law to compensate him for pain and suffering caused by the vicious denigration of his son by the Reverend Phelps and his whelps. It may be of some slight comfort to the man to know that most decent, civilized people cringe at the very thought of this disgusting man's odious campaign.

Even his maker must look down upon his theatrically offensive antics with disgust.