When Maryland resident Albert Snyder buried his son, Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006, he did so before a picketing crowd of Westboro Baptist Church fundamentalists carrying signs that read, “You’re going to hell,” “God hates you,” and - perhaps the worst of all - “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

Understandably, Snyder Senior was quite upset. So upset, in fact, that in 2007, he and his family sued the Westboro Baptist Church - which believes that the deaths of soldiers are God’s punishment for the sin of homosexuality - for privacy invasion, intentional i...