The father claimed protesters destroyed his only chance to bury in peace the son he lost in Iraq. The picketers who carried signs with such messages as "Thank God for dead soldiers" countered they were only trying to oppose gays in the military.
After the two sides presented legal arguments in a Baltimore courtroom yesterday, a federal judge offered a split decision. He ruled that a more limited lawsuit brought by Albert Snyder, the father of the slain Marine whose funeral was targeted by the Kansas-based anti-gay group, can proceed to trial next week.
At times incensed over what he described as long-winded theological speeches given by a member of Westboro Baptist Church, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett nonetheless dismissed two of the five counts against the church and three of its leaders, saying in part that their statements, no matter how incendiary, amounted to protected speech.
Comments posted on the church's Web site that Snyder raised his son "for the devil" and taught his son how to "defy his Creator, to divorce and to commit adultery" did not defame the father because it was "not the kind of information that a reasonable person is going to assume was presented to be considered fact," Bennett said.
In granting part of the defendants' motion for summary judgment, Bennett found church members did not defame Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder or his family by implying that he was gay or raised by adulterers because his parents divorced. Nor did the church members invade the family's privacy, the judge ruled, because their anti-gay and anti-divorce accusations were based on a general expression of the church members' fundamentalist beliefs.
At the civil trial set to begin Monday in federal court, the jury will be able to consider whether Westboro Baptist Church is liable for an intentional infliction of emotional distress based on the message from its members' signs, Bennett said. The judge also will allow jurors to decide whether the Snyder family's expectation of privacy at Matthew Snyder's funeral was violated by the church members' protest outside St. John Roman Catholic Church in Westminster.
The complaint filed in June 2006 - the first individual lawsuit brought against the Kansas organization for its protests at these ceremonies - does not seek a specific amount of damages. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
