What Is Free Speech?

Hypothetical: You have an 18 year old Catholic son. He volunteers, and gets shipped out to Afghanistan. There, he befriends local Muslims, and one night, while reading a storybook to a group of laughing Muslim children through a translator, a suicide bomber jumps into the room where this is going on. As the suicide bomber tries to let go of his spring-loaded dead man switch, your son grips the switch and wrestles the bomber out the door into a pit outside, where the bomb goes off, killing your son.

Muslims, fellow soldiers, nation and family all mourn the tragic loss of your son.

You greet the C-5A bearing your son's body at Dover AFB, and then make funeral arrangements.

The next day, Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas has protestors outside the New Jersey Catholic Church where the funeral is about to take place. Their signs say, "Does a soul belonging to a faggot-protecting religion go to Heaven?" "He fought and died for an Army which protects faggots. He's Hell-bound." "He died giving aid and comfort to members of the same religion which burned our families alive in the Twin Towers."

When you see the signs as you walk into Church, you collapse to the ground in tears.

Are the protestors engaging in Constitutionally-protected free speech?