I can't has cheezburger

I have to say that I feel like the gay rights movement has come a long ways when the so-called “most hated family in America” is the Phelps clan of Topeka, Kansas.  For those unfamiliar, they’re these guys:

What’s remarkable about this family is that they take gay hating so far, that nobody will even go so far as to say “well, I hate gay people, but this crosses the line.” People truly hate this family with a passion, and it’s one of the few pro-gay stances that pretty much all of America will come together on.  It’s for that reason that the Phelps family has probably done more for the gay rights movement than any rainbow-studded parade will ever be able to do.  The Phelps family is considered to be so despicable that people are turned off to homophobia because they don’t want to come off like these guys.

I read this story on Huffington Post about a teenager who has drafted a bill hoping that Congress will pass it.  Laws have previously been passed regarding this, but they were later ruled unconstitutional, leaving Fox News in a real pickle about how they would spin this (in one article they avoided this cognitive dissonance by simply not mentioning that the Westboro Baptist Church is homophobic).

But the truth is, Westboro Baptist Church is right here.  The government doesn’t have the right to create laws which inhibit their free speech (though they’re morons for trying to explain that “God” has something to do with their defense).  And I would truly feel some concern if we passed this law and/or found such laws constitutional.

The Constitution imposes these restrictions on the government expressly to prevent populist laws from getting created.  That’s because such laws have potential to really oppress minority groups, and we’d probably have ended up with laws entitling all men to steaks and blow jobs every day (pre-women’s suffrage) and enforced five hour work weeks.

We have a Constitution because our founding fathers were intelligent enough to realize that although democracy is probably a good route, putting everything up to a majority-rules vote won’t create a just society.  Look at 2008’s Prop 8 here in California after gay marriage bans were ruled unconstitutional by California’s supreme court.  I certainly don’t like the fact that the Phelps family is doing what they’re doing, but I also recognize that trying to create laws to keep them from doing things I don’t like undermines the very protections that allow me to do things that other people don’t like (like being gay).

The price of your freedom is that you have to let others have it and use it.