in_the_media

Harrisburg Patriot-News - October 9, 2010

Media Outlet: 

Harrisburg Patriot-News



A Supreme Court case pitting the father of a dead Marine from York against members of a Kansas church who picketed his funeral is touching on complicated and competing rights to free speech and privacy. Did church members have a First Amendment right to use the funeral as an occasion to deliver a "religious viewpoint" that the deaths of soldiers are divine punishment for the nation's acceptance of homosexuality? "We don't limit free speech because it’s outrageous or insulting," says David Kairys, a professor at Temple's Beasley School of Law. "That's the price you pay — it's real — in order (to) get ideas out there and make people free to say and free to hear them."