Just a Moment of Your Time, Please

As writers, the freedom of speech is very important to us—and if we live in America, it is guaranteed. I feel that it’s important to take note of the bad examples set by others who soil that wonderful concept we call freedom. Thus this post.

As you some of you may be aware, Auburn University (in Alabama) recently suffered a terrible tragedy—a student, Lauren Burk, was murdered. Her body was found on a road, and roughly half an hour later, her car was set on fire.

Auburn is in Alabama, the state next to mine, which is Georgia (the state where Lauren’s family lives). I feel compelled to talk about this issue because I have family and friends there—in fact, some attend Auburn University. This event has spread out its tendrils and pierced the chest of everyone connected to the school, and even the town—even myself. Since leaving “The Loveliest Village on the Plains” shortly after the event (I was visiting my recently-hospitalized father [just a bicycling accident, broken collarbone but nothing life-threatening]), I have kept up with this issue because I feel like I have to know. Since this murder, it’s felt unnatural, like someone strange is running a rotting finger down your back.
When death enters a life, through whatever small connection, it always lingers for a while.

But to connect this back to the writing theme of this blog, and my opening paragraph, a group known as the Westboro Baptist Church decided to picket the memorial services—both the college’s and the family’s—because Lauren Burk was a “Christ-rejecting Jew”, among other irreligious reasons.
This is a PDF, downloaded from their website (I’m asking you to view it here because I don’t want their site to get whatever traffic—no matter how minuscule—I have, just on general principles). This is a Wikipedia page about them.
Their website, which is not going to be linked to here, is www (dot) godhatesfags (dot) com. It is NSFW, but not in the exciting sense.
This is the Auburn University page about Lauren.
This is the YouTube video of her memorial service.

You will notice that there are no protesters in it, which is where this post has a slightly happy ending: the memorial service was “moved” (I believe it was planned the moment word got way of a protest, because everything was impromptu) to the Beard-Eaves Coliseum, and you had to have an ID to get inside the building.

From things I have heard (granted, they may not be true) one of the counter-protesters who showed up punched a WBC protester in the face.

I needed to write this post to share these things with you—I’m not sure why. Perhaps each of my readers (the three of you) will divine your own meaning from it.
Me, I think I just needed to tell someone.
But I also wanted to be fair to my blog—which is, after all, about my readers and fellow writers, and not myself, hence the (admittedly flimsy) connection to writing.

To return to that issue, it is important to consider the obviously murky line between things that are merely offensive to some and works that, say, disrupt a family’s period of mourning. I feel that one is justified in making this distinction because a family at a funeral doesn’t have to bring a copy of that damn flyer. Someone offended by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (aside from not understanding the work) can always stop reading. But protesting a funeral or memorial service? You can’t shut that off.

In my opinion, that is the crucial difference. I am anti-censorship—with one caveat. You should not have the right to trap people into feeling uncomfortable or offended. If I went to someone’s house, strapped them down, and played the most violent movies imaginable, then I’m pretty sure my actions are not covered by free speech, but instead fall under the category of harassment, among other crimes.
So the YouTube videos of Phelps that preach hate? To me, those shouldn't be deleted from YouTube's servers. You can always not watch them. But you can’t avoid people at your daughter’s funeral shouting things roughly equivalent to “Thank God that man killed your daughter”, “God hates Jews like you”, and other assorted phrases probably floating around constantly in WBC protests.

Should we imprison them because we don’t like what they say? No. If that’s our reason, then we’re not standing on very moral ground, which makes us hypocrites. But if we want to protect an emotionally hurting family and these people are harassing them—that’s a different matter.
There is legal precedent: the case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. Chaplinsky was arrested for the use of “fighting words”, that is, words that are intended to provoke a listener—because he was causing a breach of the peace. The Court upheld the legality of the arrest, finding that it did not violate the First Amendment.

So the question we all must ask ourselves is this: what is an abuse of freedom of speech?*

The Catcher in the Rye?

Huckleberry Finn?

Or a bunch of people at the Minnesota Bridge collapsing holding signs that says "God Hates Minnesota"?**

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*Note: opinions on this may differ; it is worth mentioning that perhaps the answer is none of the above.

**Because God hates fags. And, um... bridges?