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Why is protecting Fred Phelps' freedom of speech suddenly a priority for some people?
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By Mike Cuenca | February 5, 2006
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The sudden furor over illegal surveillance and other violations of supposedly guaranteed constitutional and civil rights rings loudly hollow. Because the truth is that for 200-plus years without interruption, such violations have been perpetrated against minority citizens and partisans of unpopular political persuasions. That's been true nationally and locally.
One immutable truth about the protection of the constitutional and civil rights of American citizens is that that protection is conditional. The primary condition for protection is that the citizen be a heterosexual white male. Another condition is that one's political and/or social speech may not be offensive to the heterosexual white males in power.
Fred Phelps embodies this truth. Phelps has flourished because he has been tolerated here in Kansas for all these years. If his message of hate and intolerance had been directed at rich, powerful white males, he'd have been silenced a long time ago by legal or social action. But because he is a white heterosexual male whose fear and loathing of homosexuals is, to a degree, shared by most Kansans, he has enjoyed a fair hearing in the courts and no widespread social movement ever developed to isolate and drive him underground.
In fact, some who are now speaking up for Phelps' rights have in the past been complacently silent or indignantly vocal when they tacitly or actively approved of silencing "offensive" speech. In that respect, pronouncements of our duty to tolerate even speech that's offensive sound like rationalizations for supporting Phelps' message.
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Originally published by the Lawrence Journal-World.
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