As the case progressed, one point became abundantly clear: the Maryland funeral at the heart of this conflict was beset by the worst possible set of facts for the men who had filed the suit. We had protested well over a hundred funerals by the time this lawsuit was filed, and there were times when only narrow spaces had separated us from our targets. We’d stood in clear view of the funeral entrances where our chilling melodies had shattered the silence, echoing off church facades and into the unwilling ears of the mourners, their sorrow at the mercy of our joy:
God sinks your battle ships, you little wimps
Throw out your lifelines, boys
Your time has come to die, die, die, die
There had been no such scene at the Snyder funeral. Police had “stuck us off in the north forty!” as my mother exclaimed. They had used orange snow fencing to corral her and six other picketers into a small area located more than a thousand feet from the church, on public land, and there was no one around to see them but members of the media and law enforcement officers. The picket was over before the funeral began, and the funeral procession had even been routed so that it didn’t pass by Westboro picketers at all. A professional videographer would shoot footage showing that a hill prevented funeral-goers from seeing Westboro’s neon signs from the procession route, though the deceased’s father testified that he’d seen “the tops of them.” We took it as a signal of divine favor that this was the funeral we’d been sued for. God was going to use this lawsuit as a preaching tool, and He was going to lead us to victory such that no other family would dare to take us on over this issue again.
At Westboro, it was all hands on deck. Everyone with any skill would have a part to play. My mother and Margie would be at the helm with their familiar split focus of logistics and law; the other lawyers would help Margie with research and strategy; and the young adults would do the menial but important work of transcribing news stories to use as evidence. We were a well-oiled machine, always shifting to make sure that every need was met. Did a mother have to work late? Another would make sure her children got to the evening pickets in Topeka on time. Had Margie finished writing a brief? Her siblings were standing by to edit. Did anyone seem pressed beyond measure? Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
The Maryland case was a dream for a wannabe lawyer like me. At the time, I was pursuing a degree in business at Washburn University, a small public institution that had been the destination for nearly all Westboro members’ post-secondary education ever since Gramps had graduated from its law school. My time at Washburn didn’t fit the typical experience of college as a time of questioning and independence. The university was located less than two miles from my home, and we had protested there at least weekly from the early days of our picketing ministry—an unlikely place for a Westboro member to find, or even to seek, intellectual freedom. I loved that the university system allowed me to focus on classes and subjects I found most interesting, and it was an improvement over high school in other ways, as well. I was only required to be on campus for classes and had almost no interaction with fellow students outside of that—which made things a lot easier for me. Westboro’s beliefs and public protests had always been such a huge part of my identity, and ever more so as I got older. Having to keep that mostly separated from my life at school—largely ignoring the very most important part of me—hadn’t been easy. In college, I didn’t have to work nearly as hard to maintain that separation. I already had far more distance from my peers, and I also felt less inhibited about using any relevant university assignments as an opportunity to detail and expound on Westboro’s activities—to address how I really saw the world.
I couldn’t wait to get to law school, but in the meantime, I relished learning the nuts and bolts of the Snyder case. The number and scope of legal issues seemed to multiply with each passing day, but one of the central questions was whether a state’s tort law—claims