Right to privacy needed
The Supreme Court will take up the issue this term of the funeral protests of the nuts from the Westward Baptist Church.
These ultra-homophobic wackos believe every combat death is God's "justice" for a nation that "allows" homosexuals to exist. They are more concerned with pushing their not-quite-on-this-planet agenda than caring about the grieving families whose sons and daughters died defending the very freedoms that these people abuse.
Make no mistake about it, this is a clear abuse of the First Amendment. But you cannot legislate common sense and taste, and these people lack both -- to the nth degree. What they do is disgusting and beyond belief.
And probably legal.
It would be interesting to see if the court can frame some kind of argument that would prevent such a terrible misuse of perhaps the most important freedom Americans have (for without it, all other freedoms would soon be in jeopardy). But it seems unlikely. Sometimes our freedoms require that we put up with such highly inappropriate behavior, no matter how revolting it is.
It would be nice if there were some constitutional right to privacy that would protect these families from the intrusion of political/religious activists like this. But there isn't. Not yet.
In a world in which less and less of our lives are private, where people like the Westward Baptist Church followers, cyber bullies, voyeurs and others can intrude on the private lives of decent people, perhaps the time has come to begin developing a constitutional right to privacy, although framing it in the kinds of simple "core principal" language that makes our Bill of Rights so valuable would be very difficult.
But it is time to try, and once that language is properly developed and thought out to its logical conclusions, the process of approving it should then begin. If you have some ideas about that language, send it to our editor, and we'll see if that process can begin here.
Maybe, just maybe, we can keep our existing freedoms and still keep families shattered by the loss of a son or daughter who served our nation from having to put up with crazy, tasteless people like the Westward Baptist protestors.
- -- Posted by SeanDSP on Wed, Oct 13, 2010, at 1:58 PM
- -- Posted by Lil Miss's Mom on Fri, Oct 15, 2010, at 9:30 PM
- -- Posted by kimkovac on Sun, Oct 17, 2010, at 11:18 PM
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