Right to protest vs. rights of parents whose sons died for our nation?

Here's a news item from Pennsylvania that frankly makes me madder than hell.

The father of a Marine killed in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters from Kansas was ordered to pay the protesters' appeal costs, his lawyers said Monday. Fox News reported today that he will defy a court order and not pay the protesters' appeal costs.

"I don't think I'm going to be writing a check until I hear from the Supreme Court," Snyder told Fox News on Tuesday. "I'm not about to pay them anything."

The two-page decision supplied by attorneys for Albert Snyder of York, Pa., offered no details on how the court came to its decision.

On Friday, Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered Snyder to pay $16,510 to Fred Phelps. Phelps is the leader of Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder's funeral in 2006.

Attorneys also said Snyder is struggling to come up with fees associated with filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision adds "insult to injury," said Sean Summers, one of Snyder's lawyers.

The high court agreed to consider whether the protesters' message is protected by the First Amendment or limited by the competing privacy and religious rights of the mourners.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the not-reverend-at-all Fred Phelps is a religious fanatic who gives a bad name to all Christians. If you can stoop any lower than harassing the families of our honored war dead by showing up at their funerals to call them homosexuals and carrying signs that say "Thank God for Dead Soldiers"... well, I just can't imagine how it's possible to be lower.

Here's another chance for the Supreme Court to restore a bit of sanity to America. And the Court of Appeals that ruled against this Marine's father and in favor of the "rights" of Phelps and his band of lunatics should be tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail.

I'm all for first-amendment rights to protest, but what about the rights of the parents of soldiers who gave their lives for those freedoms we hold so dear? Don't they have a greater right to be honored and not vilified by some band of lunatics calling themselves Baptist Christians?

If you're a Christian, join me in prayer that justice will be served for this Marine father. And also that not-rev. Fred Phelps will get his due reward from on high, sooner rather than later.