Westboro Baptist Church and Retirement Plan

The Westboro Baptist Church is in front of the Supreme Court this session. The Church is small, eighteen members or so, and inbred, all of its members are members of the Phelps family, and unaffiliated with any known church, Baptist or otherwise, in the world. Their credo, such as it is, is the United States is being punished for its tolerance of homosexuals and national tragedies are generally attributed to God's judgment of the country's moral laxity. The Church focuses on military deaths and tragedies of national importance to demonstrate and raise awareness of their point. (They also hate most other creeds but that is beside the point here.) The Court is now hearing a case in which the father of a soldier killed by a roadside bomb in the Middle East sued the Westboro Church for their disrupting the dead son's funeral. The Church, defended by the Church lawyer, a daughter of the Church's pastor, argues the Church is protected by the Free Speech and Freedom of Religion clauses in the Bill of Rights. The Church is defended by The Phelps Chartered Law Firm, the family law firm.

It is easy to look at this as a necessary irritation a free society suffers where the edge of a long bell-shaped curve is protected. But there is another aspect here, Section 1988, 42USC Section 1988 "The Civil Rights Attorney Fee Act". This is a law created to pay attorneys who represent deprived clients. Think ACLU. This is a law that forces the people , usually the government, to pay for the lawyer of their opposition. Every time the government sues one of these peripheral shard groups, or are sued by them, the taxpayer pays both sides.

This looks like a fertile field for the entrepreneurial mind. Take some sacred core beliefs--religion and speech--mix with some tender societal events--soldier funeral or mining disaster--and shake well. Bill $350 an hour.

Fortunately lawyers and ministers are above such behavior.