Brittany Wallace, Westboro Baptist Church

Based out of Topeka Kansas, The Westboro Baptist Church has been circulating news headlines. For some, the outlandish activities of the Westboro Baptist Church members labels their organization a hate group, for others, a religious extremist groups and for even more they are simply Americans exercising their first amendment rights. The struggle to truly comprehend this particular freedom of expression involves one to understand where these people come from, what exactly their ideals are, where they stem from, as well as looking into arguments for both sides of the political fence regarding The Westboro Baptist Church and their fight for their first amendment rights.
Obviously the message of the West Borrow Baptist Church is unpopular among Americans and the world wide. Nonetheless West Borrow Baptist Church members insist that they are simply exercising their constitutional right as protected under the first amendment . In response to the public unrest resulted from the church’s pickets and public demonstrations elected officials have stepped up to pass new laws to deter and control their behavior. The federal government and about 40 American states have enacted laws in an attempt to curtail the churches pickets. While each law varies in detail, most involve limiting the times, locations, distances of the pickets as well as establishing some kind of buffer zone surrounding the location of the memorial service and/or funeral. But the federal government and state laws are being met with much criticism and claims that they are infringing upon this group’s freedom of speech. So where is the line drawn? At what point, if any, can government, “prohibit or restrict speech that is extremely offensive in a particular setting”? All these questions are circulating the desks of government officials today.