World-Herald editorial: Westboro message backfires

The First Amendment is a precious American asset. It gives people the right to stand up for inspiring ideals.

It also gives them the right to espouse utter foolishness.

So it is with the protesters who hail from the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church.

Nebraskans understandably complain that the Westboro bunch, by settling a legal dispute with Sarpy County, has avoided punishment for flag desecration. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, though, that, like it or not, the First Amendment gives Americans ample leeway to take even the extraordinary step of abusing our country’s national banner.

The Westboro folks — an independent congregation — gleefully take advantage of these free-speech rights to dream up ways to spark people’s anger. Even worse, they go to fanatical lengths to try to deepen people’s grief.

Thus the grotesque spectacle of the Westboro funeral protests that, incredibly, hurl insults at fallen soldiers as their loved ones are putting them to rest.

In other words, the Westboro gang is an outfit that specializes in standing common decency on its head. These protests are untethered to either morality or upright behavior. Indeed, they’re not protests at all; they’re simply exhibitionism. Morally hollow exhibitionism.

Protests are supposed to assert a set of important societal principles. But the Westboro demonstrators, with their practiced spasms of hysteria and their boundless obsession with gays and lesbians, don’t communicate any coherent agenda. Their actions are fueled merely by self-indulgence and pettiness, bereft of actual content.

These ubiquitous protesters perhaps are best comparable to a cloud of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Except in the Westboro case, they don’t infect anybody: Ironically, the more frantic and devious the Westboro gang becomes, the more its actions lead people to embrace patriotism and give a listen to advocates of gay rights.

A crowd of wild-eyed, goose-stepping Nazis would have a greater chance of winning converts than the Westboro folks do.

The more the Westboro gang tromps maniacally around America and indulges in childishness and cruelty, the more people are determined to express their love for our slain service personnel; the more resolute they are to hold America’s flag even closer to their hearts.

The more the Westboro gang shouts its nonsensical and hate-filled slogans, the more opportunities fair-minded Americans will give gay-rights advocates to make their case in the ongoing debates over what makes for a just society.

The Westboro fanatics aren’t anything we should be thankful for. But at least Americans can take comfort that the more energy and ugliness they put into their demonstrations, the more they lead people to oppose a message of anger and hate.

The worst enemy of the Westboro folks isn’t gays. It’s themselves.

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