Snyder Vs Phelps Case Study

Case Study: Snyder v. Phelps (2011)

Fred Phelps, the pastor at the Westboro Church, along with his followers believes that God punishes the US for allowing homosexuality freedoms, especially within the military. To express their feelings the Westboro Church and its people sometimes picket military funerals in hopes that their voices will be heard. In 2006 Albert Snyder’s son who was a Lance Corporal for the United States Marine Corps was killed in the line of the duty during his time in Iraq. Matthew Snyder was killed in Anbar, Iraq when he was the gunner on a Humvee that ended up rolling after hitting something. The Westboro Church decided that they would picket Matthew Snyder’s funeral, notifying the sanction holding the funeral in advance
Both Conservatives and Liberals strongly believe in freedom of speech, but it is Liberals that are more likely to take the realm of expressing themselves publically. Liberals take pride in the idea of the “political left”, which basically outlines their devotion to America’s First Amendment the right to free speech. Although it is usually Liberals that we see voicing their opinion publically, the Westboro Church is overall a Conservative group because of what they stand for. Most people including the media portray and proclaim that the Westboro Church is a Liberal party but when you dig deeper you start to notice that isn’t really the case. The Westboro Church has many things in common with those that claim to be Conservative; “both are against marriage equality, both are for the replacement of constitutional government with religious dogma of their particular form of Christianity, both are for the reduction of the rights of minorities and women, and both are for getting rid of reproductive rights and family
Phelps places before us a choice where we must decide between the ethical values of basic respect versus the legal right of the First Amendment, freedom of speech. From an ethical perspective, it is easy to decide this case based upon the ideas that we adopted over time that all in all became a social norm. The ethical value of respect at a funeral will easily make someone choose the side of Snyder’s in this case just because over time we have established that funerals are meant to mourn and to pay respect to not only the fallen but also the family of that person. Although it may be interpreted that the reason that the Westboro Church chose to take action the way that they did was because it was necessary to get their point across, ethically it is frowned upon because of how we know funerals are supposed to take place. The Westboro Church had many options to establish the point that they were trying to get across such as the newspaper, TV, or the radio, but instead they chose to do it at a US Marine’s funeral which ended up working in their favor gaining them national recognition. Potter Stewart, a once US Justice wrote with regards to Ethics that, “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do." This quote explains the complete ethical aspect of this case because it describes how legally, the Westboro Church had every right to do what they did that day but ethically they were in the wrong intruding on the