Is this free speech?

ehathewa

Yes.  Unfortunately, they should be allowed to do that under free speech.  Free speech is even for idiots, morons, jerks, and media whores.  (I truley think that the extra media attention is what they are going for by targeting miliary funerals.)

That doesn't mean I like it.  In fact, I despise the Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps.  They came to my high school to protest back in 2001.  The posters they brought were terrible.  The incident that lead to this was a student wore a T-shirt that said "Straight Pride." A gay student complained to the principal saying that the shirt made him uncomfortable.  The principal asked the first student to take off the shirt.  First student sues the school.  Fred Phelps jumps on bandwagon, protests at school calling our principal  gay...  His protest wasn't about free speech just about how gay people are terrible.  First student wins lawsuit. 

Unfortunately, most of the news articles are not online anymore since so much time has passed:
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=13974