Issues of common decency and respect for human dignity suffered a serious setback ast monthMarch 26 when the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that Albert Synder of York, Pa, was unjustified in suing Fred Phelps and his followers for picketing the 2006 funeral of Synder’s son, 20-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Synder, who was killed in a vehicle rollover accident in Iraq. The court also ordered Synder to cover Phelps’s court costs in the amount of $16,510.

Before this recent impediment, Synder successfully won a law suit against Phelps, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.. At the lower court trial, the jury awarded Synder $11 million, which the court later reduced to $5 million.

Synder has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which has agreed to consider whether the protestors’ actions are within the scope of protected speech covered by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or are circumscribed by issues of privacy and religious rights of the mourners.

Fred Phelps and his followers travel around the country protesting funerals of fallen soldiers (most of who are apparently heterosexual) claiming that these deaths are God’s punishment against a country that tolerates homosexuality. Phelps is also notorious for his 1998 protest of the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a college student from the University of Wyoming in Laramie murdered in a brutal homophobic assault.

Ironically, in their own perverted way, Phelps and company have accomplished something quite remarkable following the court ruling. Even in our current era of deep political and philosophical divisions, they have brought members of the political left, the center, and the moderate right — and even some further to the right — into agreement on an issue.

Commentators as philosophically disparate as progressives such as Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman and Ed Schultz from MSNBC, to Fox News conservatives like Bill O’Reilly and Glen Beck have all denounced the court decision, and in particular, the ruling on the payment of court costs, as an affront to common sense and decency. O’Reilly has gone so far as to join with the American Legion in committing to cover the court costs.

Toward the end of July last summer, members of the Westboro Baptist Church traveled to Iowa to hold protest rallies in three sites: Waukee’s Jewish Historical Society, Ames on the Iowa State University Campus and Marshalltown at Marshalltown Community Theater, which was then performing the play “The Laramie Project” profiling the life and murder of Matthew Shepard.

On their website, godhatesfags.com, Phelps made yet another ironic and perverse connection, here linking his own version of homophobia with anti-Jewish oppression. Phelps and company directed their protests last summer against “…the Jews…[who] arrested, falsely accused, prosecuted and then sentenced [Jesus] to death” and because “God hates Iowa” for being “the first to begin giving money to little [homosexual] perverts for no other reason than they brag about being little perverts.”

Phelps continues the centuries-old linkage in the many clear and stunning connections between historical stereotypical representations and oppression against Jewish people and lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered (LGBT) people.

This week, as we commemorate LGBT Awareness Week at Iowa State, with the recent actions by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, I am again struck by the ways in which the numerous forms of oppression — including racism, sexism, homophobia, transgender oppression, classism, ableism, ageism, ethnic and religious oppression and all the other forms — while oppressing members of minoritized groups, on many levels also hurt members of dominant groups. Although the effects of oppression differ quantitatively for specific minoritized groups and dominant groups, and though it cannot be denied that oppression serves the vested interests of some, in the final analysis, most people lose.

Phelps and his followers highlight in clear relief that we are all at risk of the harmful effects of homophobia (prejudice and discrimination against LGBT people), irrespective of our actual sexual and gender identity and expression.

The meaning, therefore, is quite clear. When any group of people is scapegoated, it is ultimately everyone’s concern. We all, therefore, have a self interest in actively working to dismantle all the many forms of oppression, including homophobia.

I believe that we are all born into an environment polluted by homophobia (one among many forms of oppression), which falls upon us like acid rain. For some people, spirits are tarnished to the core, others are marred on the surface, and no one is completely protected.

Therefore, we all have a responsibility, indeed an opportunity, to join together as allies to construct protective shelters from the corrosive effects of oppression while working to clean up the homophobic environment in which we live. Once sufficient steps are taken to reduce this pollution, we will all breathe a lot easier.

– Warren Blumenfeld