Michael Smerconish is host of the new CNN program “Smerconish,” which debuts Saturday, March 8, at 9 a.m. EST and will feature more on this story, including an exclusive interview with Albert Snyder.

Walt Fisher’s obituary, after he lost his battle with lung cancer, was notable for what it didn’t reveal. When the 57-year-old from York, Pa., died in the spring of 2011, the local Daily Record reported his place of birth (Hershey); the names of his parents (Harold and Mary, née Spangler); his employer (JoS. A. Bank Clothiers); and even his hobbies (music, reading and spending time at the beach). Reference was also made to those who survived him: “a brother, Patrick E. Kling, and his wife, Wendy of Hummelstown; a step-brother, David Kling, and his wife, Susan of Harrisburg; a nephew, Noah Kling; and an aunt, Doris Eby of Hershey.”

Despite listing some of those Fisher held dear, the obituary was silent about the most important person in his life for his final 14 years: Nothing was said of Albert Snyder.


Of course, mention of Al would have raised some eyebrows. He had been in the newspapers plenty in recent months, on account of the landmark free speech case he had lost at the Supreme Court, just 10 weeks before Walt’s death. Al’s court fight had grown out of the battle he had been waging for years against a homophobic church that disrupted his son’s military funeral in 2006—a case that raised monumental questions about the limits of free speech, to say nothing of the bounds of human decency. Desperate to advance a convoluted belief that soldiers’ deaths demonstrated God’s disdain for America’s homosexuals, the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church had, in the years since the American invasion of Iraq, staged headline-grabbing protests at the funerals of military personnel. The subsequent court battle Al waged over his son’s funeral brought him a measure of grim notoriety, but never publicly revealed—until now—was Al’s added motivation for fighting the cult that wrongly, viciously implied that his son was gay—namely that Al, who was Walt’s partner, is himself gay.

***

News of a loved one’s passing tends to ripple through family and friends. When Al lost Walt, that’s how things felt. But four years earlier, word of his son’s death had spread more like a tornado—a storm that started in March 2006 with the chime of a doorbell. Matt Snyder, a Marine barely out of his teens, had been deployed to Iraq for only a few weeks when Al was summoned to the door. He had been getting out of the shower on a Friday night. It was dinnertime, and his first thought was that his youngest daughter, Tracie, had once again forgotten her keys. She had been living with Al and Walt for three years.

Al hurriedly put on clothes, walked toward the door and turned on the porch light. Where he expected to see 17-year-old Tracie stood two U.S. Marines in full dress uniforms. Al immediately recognized the meaning of their presence.

“Please tell me no. Please tell me no. Please tell me he’s OK.”

Al crumbled into the arms of one of the Marines, who whispered to him, “Let’s go inside.” There, in the living room, he was formally told the news he had dreaded. “Mr. Snyder, your son died this morning.”

Al’s response was extemporaneous. “Fuck you, George Bush and Dick Cheney,” he shouted. His body shook, and tears ran down his face. His next impulse was to call Walt, who was working nearby at a men’s clothier. “Matt was killed. Come home.”

“Oh my God, I’ll be right there,” Walt replied.

The Marines stayed with Al until Walt was at his side, and they were satisfied he was safe. Al’s next concern was for his ex-wife and the Marines who would soon visit her. He called his oldest daughter, Sarah, and asked her to get to her mother’s house right away.

“Why, Dad?”

Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was only 20 when he died in Iraq, just five weeks into his deployment there. | Photo courtesy of Albert Snyder

“Sarah,” Al told his daughter, “you’ve got to go to your mother’s house now. They’re getting ready to give her some information, and she can’t be alone when she gets this.”

After a moment, Sarah seemed to comprehend the message.

“Oh my God, is Matt OK?”

“Sarah, please, just go over to the house to be with your mother.”

Then Al called his sister, Bonnie, and asked that she get in touch with the rest of the family. Meanwhile, Tracie was still at her waitressing job nearby. Al called the manager and said he was coming to get her.

“When I got there, she was bussing tables, and she waved and smiled,” Al remembers. “She said, ‘Are you coming to eat?’”

“No,” Al said. “Tracie, you have to come home.”

She said she wouldn’t leave until her father told her what he was doing there, what was going on. “I had no choice. In the middle of the restaurant I had to tell her that her brother Matt had been killed, and I can remember her just screaming until her boss brought over her coat and I took her out.”

For Al, that was the hardest—telling Matt’s sisters that they had lost their brother. “I don’t know why, or if it works like that in every family, but after my wife and I separated my kids clung to one another,” Al now explains. “They were not only siblings, but best friends.”

Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, age 20, died on March 3, 2006, in Al Qaim, in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, while sitting in the gunner position of a Humvee. The casualty report states that: “The convoy was returning from Camp Al Qaim en route to Camp Al Asad when it was involved in a single vehicle rollover in the vicinity of Al Qaim. LCPL Snyder was medevaced [sic] to the Al Qaim surgical shock trauma platoon where he was pronounced dead.”

Matt’s deployment had begun on Feb. 12; his death came just five weeks later. His obituary noted that he was the “beloved son of Julia A. Snyder (nee Francis) and Albert L. Snyder, as well as the beloved brother of Sarah Anne and Tracie Lynne.” His grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins were also mentioned.

There was no mention of Walt, his father’s longtime partner.

***

If Matt could have read his obituary, he probably would not have liked the omission of Walt’s name. When corresponding with his father during his military training and brief career in the Marines, he was quick to ask about “Mr. Walt.”

Al and Matt were constantly writing to one another, starting when Matt began basic training at Parris Island, S.C. Al was always touched by the simple, personal way Matt would address his envelopes: “Dad,” at 760 Spring Ln., York, PA 17403.

Matt's letters home to his father were addressed simply "Dad." | Photo courtesy of Albert Snyder

Mail was initially Matt’s only way to communicate with his family; call privileges didn’t come until basic training was over. His early notes, on letterhead from Parris Island, were handwritten, usually just a page long and mostly offering tidbits about the rigors of his new military life and his yearning for sports news from the outside world:

“I found out the Marlins won the World Series in game 6 when I was at church. We fought with Pugil sticks the other day. I won the first round and the last two rounds were no decisions. The time is going quick. You should see how good my platoon looks when we march.”

Although he often described the demands of his basic training, Matt never complained. His only need seemed to be postage, so that he could tell his family more. And usually he would ask Al to send his regards to Walt.

“I’m getting used to the yelling already. I’m looking forward to being a Marine. … I love you. Tell Mr. Walt I said hi.”

On another occasion, Matt wrote:

“I’m loving the martial arts we learn, we do that every other day. The fleas are horrible, they bite and feel like mosquitos and you can’t smack them off or you’ll be doing a lot of pushups. … Tell Mr. Walt hi and to read this if he wants. I love you.”

Al’s replies were a father’s combination of family updates and sports reports. A typical greeting card is one Al sent to Parris Island depicting two people on opposite sides of the world. Inside, the message reads: “No Fair. Thinking of You.” In neat penmanship, the product of his strict Catholic education, Al told his son:

“Sorry to hear you’ve been pushed around a little. It’s all part of the plan, to make you a good Marine. By the way, did you hear the Ravens lost their quarterback Kyle Bowler for 6-8 weeks due to leg injuries, Uncle Mark is devastated.”

“Sleep well and know how much you are loved and missed here. With much heart, Dad.”

On a Friday night in the fall of 2003, Al shared the latest baseball news.

“The Orioles just announced that Lee Mazzilli from the Yankees is the new coach. Wish it would have been an ex-Oriole.”

He also enclosed an article he had found online and told Matt that it made him think “of you and how proud I am of you.” This time he shared Walt’s good wishes with his son.

“Matt don’t worry about how many letters you send or how close together they are. I can’t wait to get home to get my mail hoping there’s something in it from you. Mr. Walt works a lot so most of the time I’m alone, so your letters keep me company. Oh by the way, Mr. Walt says Ha.” [sic]

The last time they spoke, Matt was in Kuwait, about to cross the border into Iraq. Matt wrote to his dad twice while in Iraq. Al has read, but never shared those letters with anyone. He finds them too painful even for his own review. The last of them arrived three days after Matt’s death, while Al was still waiting for his son’s body to be returned. When a condolence letter arrived at Al’s home from the White House, he burned it. “It was a form note,” Al now recalls. “It wasn’t personal. It was a just a form letter.” Al remembers being struck by the fact that it wasn’t handwritten. “It’s something that they send out to everybody.”

Almost immediately after Matt’s death, Al began replaying in his mind his many conversations with his son about his decision to join the Marines, and he is still replaying those conversations today, eight years later. The war in Iraq had just begun when Matt talked about enlisting. Al told him that while he could understand his going to Afghanistan to participate in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, he could not understand his fighting in Iraq, not after the supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction on which that war had been sold never turned up. According to Al, the conversation was never political. Al had been a Republican all his life and had cast his first vote for a Democratic presidential candidate only two years earlier, for John Kerry in 2004. He wasn’t sure Matt had ever even registered to vote.

“I know that he was liberal when it came to gay issues and that a lot of his friends were black. He didn’t see race or color,” Al remembers. “He was a spiritual type of kid, and a religious kid who’d been raised Catholic.”

Al is quick to dispute any conjecture that Matt’s enlistment was in reaction to his father’s coming out. (“Matt started talking about becoming a Marine way before he knew.”) He thinks the decision may have had more to do with growing up amid the domestic strife of two parents growing apart.

“I often question if Matt went into the military because he didn’t want to hurt his mother’s feelings by either moving out on his own or in with me and just thought it was his way of escaping. I don’t know, but I often think of that,” Al says. “I’m no fool, I know divorce has a major effect on kids, but I know the way that my wife and I were living was also having a major effect on the kids.”

Of course, puzzling over why Matt had joined the Marines isn’t going to change things. Al knows that. It won’t bring his son back.

***

It took five days for Matt’s body to be returned to the United States, and all the while Al told himself and Walt that maybe there had been a cruel mistake, that Matt was still alive and would be discovered in Iraq. Finally, with Walt at his side, he had no choice but to confront the truth as his only son’s remains arrived at the Pritts Funeral Home in Westminster, Md. There was no longer any escaping the fact that his handsome, athletic, outdoorsman Matt was dead.

The first indication that Al’s suffering would be compounded came at the viewing the following night, when a family friend made a passing reference to the prospect of “protesters” at Matt’s funeral. Al’s first thought was that anybody doing such a thing must be an anti-war activist. But then someone mentioned Westboro Baptist Church, which Al immediately remembered from news of the 1998 funeral service for Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old college student who had been brutally murdered near Laramie, Wyo. Westboro became a national spectacle at Shepard’s funeral, parading with signs saying “Matt in Hell” and “AIDS cures fags.” By the time Al had heard the rumors that his own son’s memory might be treated to such an indignity, members of the Westboro church had already posted notice of their intention to their website. In their announcement on www.godhatesfags.com, the group said it was hoping to use Matt’s military funeral to call attention to America’s permissive views on homosexuality. Skilled in the art of protest, Westboro immediately requested the protection of law enforcement.

The Westboro Baptist Church is led by an octogenarian pastor named Fred Phelps, a once-suspended lawyer who has, for 50 years, preached a vehemently anti-gay doctrine to a congregation comprised largely of his family members. The church first began picketing and demonstrating against homosexuality in the early 1990s. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 71-person congregation turned its attention to military funerals, claiming that the death of American servicemen was God’s retribution for the nation’s increased tolerance of homosexuality. It didn’t seem to matter to them that Matt wasn’t gay—and the church knew nothing of Al’s sexuality. To them, the funeral represented a place to make a provocative point.

What I Found at Westboro

For its first 35 years, Westboro Baptist was just another strict little heartland church. Founded in 1955, the Topeka, Kansas, congregation drew fewer than 100 people to Sunday services. Its Calvinist teachings were extreme, but not newsworthy. Then its pastor, Fred Phelps, came up with a tagline that made Westboro the most infamous church in America: “God hates fags.” Westboro’s vocal anti-homosexuality campaign began in 1991. Church members claimed that gay men had propositioned youth from the congregation in the toilets of Topeka’s Gage Park, and alleged that city officials had ignored complaints. So they started picketing the park, holding signs that read, “Gays In Restrooms.” Fred Phelps soon decided “gays” was a misnomer. “Fag,” he decreed, was more appropriate, citing a medieval definition of “faggot” as a bundle of sticks for starting fires. Gay people, Phelps taught, are human kindling that will ignite divine wrath. He also decided that his church was the last remnant of true faith on earth. “I used to preach all the time on 2 Chronicles 7:14, where God says that if people will turn from their wicked ways, he will heal their land,” Phelps told me when I visited Westboro for four days in 2011. “But it’s too late.” Well, not quite. As a hard-line Calvinist bastion, Westboro, which has about 40 baptized members, teaches that salvation isn’t possible for everyone. Instead, God has handpicked who will go to heaven—and just a few of God’s chosen have yet to come “home.” “Every time we baptize some people,” Phelps said, “I’m thinking, ‘Maybe this is that last sheep.’” Preaching at Westboro is often synonymous with picketing. They target other churches, concerts, sporting events—all signs of worldly wickedness. After 9/11, they started picketing military funerals, attributing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to America’s tolerance of homosexuality. And while it’s often alleged that Westboro funds itself mostly with proceeds from lawsuits, that’s untrue. Its members are mostly well-paid professionals—lawyers, businessmen, nurses—who spend their disposable income on picketing. Even family vacations are protest opportunities. According to Fred’s daughter Margie, a lawyer who successfully argued the church’s case before the Supreme Court: “We never travel without our signs.” In recent years, the church has gone multimedia. They’ve embraced Twitter; Fred’s granddaughter Megan Phelps-Roper, who got all her family to tweet, told me, “The Lord has given us a new platform.” They’re also fond of rewriting pop songs, like their version of the Frozen anthem, that they post online. The church’s disproportionate reach amazes even its own members. They see every piece of anti-Westboro legislation, each anti-picketing lawsuit, as divine amplification of their message. “This is a little church!” Margie Phelps told me. “This is the power of the Lord.” But they express consternation at being called hateful. (The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Westboro as a hate group.) They believe they’re the most loving people in the land. According to Fred Phelps’s son Tim, “The way you love your neighbors is to warn them. If you don’t, you hate your neighbor.” This sounds ludicrous to nonbelievers—and that fact, like everything else, is spun to reinforce their conviction that only they have been chosen. Indeed, if missionaries are marketers, Westboro deploys niche marketing to the extreme: only God’s handpicked few can see their signs as good news. “If you’re the elect, the only thing the signs are going to do is scare you to repent,” Tim said. The non-elect’s opinions are irrelevant; as one Westboro sign reads: “God hates your feelings.” For all their vitriol, they were unfailingly hospitable when I visited while reporting for a book I wrote called Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. Perversely, I needed to meet the humans who have caused such immense hurt. I wanted to understand how they’d started with the same Bible I was reared with, yet reached radically different conclusions. Not once did they mention my sexuality. Later, I realized it was irrelevant; non-members are hell-bound anyway. But they talked happily and at length about anything and everything else—Harry Potter (popular among the youth); Glee (“I loved it until those two fags started kissing,” Jael Phelps said); politics (Fred Phelps once ran for U.S. Senator as a Democrat, while his son Fred Jr. was a delegate to the 1988 Democratic Convention); and President Obama (possibly the Antichrist). Occasionally, I encountered unexpected empathy. “Before some soldiers’ funerals, when I read about their lives, I think, ‘They’re about my age. I’m no different from them,’” said Fred’s granddaughter Sara Phelps. After a pause, she hurriedly added: “Except that God’s given them up, and there’s nothing you can do. If it weren’t for the grace of God, we would be there with those people.” More and more, they are. Sixteen months after my visit, Megan Phelps-Roper called to say that she’d left Westboro, thanks largely to doubts raised by Twitter conversations. Other younger members have since departed too. Fred Phelps, 84 and ailing, hasn’t preached in months. There have been rumblings of conflict within the congregation. Its future leadership is unclear. Given that, it’s hard not to see another Westboro sign in an unintentionally hopeful way. “Destruction,” it reads, “is imminent.” Jeff Chu is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America.

Matt’s funeral, held seven days after Al’s doorbell had been rung by the Marines, was hosted at St. John’s Roman Catholic Church in Westminster. Nearby, at the intersection of Monroe Street and Father Joe’s Way, about 1,000 feet from the church, in an area cordoned off by police, a half-dozen Westboro activists stood. None of them had ever met Matt or his family. Adjacent to the church—the place where Matt had both attended religious education classes and received the sacrament of confirmation—the protesters held signs saying, “America is Doomed,” “Fag troops,” “Priests Rape Boys” and “Semper Fi Fags.” One poster depicted two men having anal intercourse. Al remembers the scene: Reporters swarmed, a motorcycle group arrived to form a kind of peace-keeping shield between the mourners and the activists, and a SWAT team sat at the ready in a nearby Winnebago. Mostly, he recalls that the demonstrators from Kansas had succeeded in turning a solemn service for a fallen Marine into a circus. “All we were trying to do was bury Matt,” Al now offers.

While the funeral may have brought out something repugnant in the Westboro activists, the event seemed to summon the best in others. Al took comfort in how his neighbors honored his son. The funeral procession stretched three miles, and thousands of people—most of whom never knew Matt—lined the streets. Schoolchildren holding American flags stood in the church driveway, and a local fire truck draped an enormous American flag from its outstretched ladder.

Al rode in the procession with Julia, his ex-wife, and their two daughters. As their car approached the church, he could see from his seat the tops of the protesters’ signs. He couldn’t, at the time, make out what they said. But later, watching the news at a private wake held in the home of his parents, he learned of the message they contained. He told Time magazine, “To me what they did was just as bad, if not worse, than if they had taken a gun and shot me.”

In the days and weeks after Matt’s funeral, Al drew strength from the outpouring of support he received from strangers scattered across the country. The Internet was initially a place of comfort where he could respond to those who said they were praying for Matt and his family. He got in the habit of googling his son’s name to read seemingly heartfelt greetings offered for his loss. But one day, a random Internet search yielded a screed that had been posted by the Westboro activists. It was titled “The Burden of Matthew Snyder:”

Seven angels from Westboro Baptist Church flew across America having the everlasting gospel to preach to the earthdwellers, saying with a loud voice FEAR GOD and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: AND, worship him that made heaven, earth, sea, and the fountains of waters.

God blessed you, Mr. and Mrs. Snyder, with a resource and his name was Matthew. He was an arrow in your quiver! In thanks to God for the comfort the child could bring you, you had a DUTY to prepare that child to serve the LORD his GOD—PERIOD! You did JUST THE OPPOSITE — you raised him for the devil.

Then after all that they sent him to fight for the United States of Sodom, a filthy country that is in lock step with his evil, wicked, and sinful manner of life, putting him in the cross hairs of a God that is so mad He has smoke coming from his nostrils and fire from his mouth! How dumb was that?

God rose up Matthew for the very purpose of striking him down, so that God’s name might be declared throughout all the earth. He killed Matthew so that His servants would have an opportunity to preach His words to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, the Maryland Legislature, and the whorehouse called St. John Catholic Church at Westminster where Matthew Snyder fulfilled his calling ...

That’s when Al, after talking with Walt, decided to fight back. Since the funeral, he had been depressed, and his diabetes had grown worse. Now, he was livid. Al reached out to two local attorneys, Sean Summers and Craig Trebilcock, asking them about his legal options to respond to the disruption and distress the Westboro protesters had caused. The lawyers offered to volunteer their time on the case—though Al would be responsible for any damages or costs incurred by suing the Westboro church—and then they filed a formal complaint in federal court claiming invasion of privacy and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit made headlines and commenced a discovery process that would last more than a year—a process that Al knew could get very personal.

Early on, Al and Walt decided to keep their own sexuality out of their case against Westboro. According to Al, it was Walt’s idea. “He said, ‘What it’s going to do is make this a gay issue and it’s not.’ He was right,” Al remembers.

“We wanted to put the focus on a human issue,” Al now says. “It didn’t have anything to do with gays. It was about doing this to our military people. I’m gay, but the other 400 families who were then in the same situation likely weren’t gay.”

"For the first time in my life, I actually felt that I truly loved somebody," says Albert Snyder (left) of his partner Walt Fisher. "I really loved him." | Photo courtesy of Albert Snyder

Al’s attorneys shared his desire to keep his sexuality out of the legal proceedings. “It simply didn’t matter,” recalls Trebilcock, who has since become a county judge in Pennsylvania. “This was a case about a hate group targeting and abusing a parent trying to say goodbye to his son with dignity and love.” Still, Trebilcock says he anticipated that Al’s sexuality could nonetheless be made public. “Gay or straight, Al Snyder is one of the bravest men I’ve ever met, as he went into this fully expecting he would be savaged and ridiculed publicly because of his sexuality.”

Where Al was claiming emotional damages resulting from Westboro’s behavior, his psychological condition would inevitably become subject to inquiry. When a treating physician’s notes made a passing reference to his sexuality, Al’s lawyers successfully had that portion of the record redacted. To the relief of Al’s lawyers, the federal judge to whom the case was assigned, Richard Bennett—placed on the bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush—ruled that the medical information alluding to Al’s sexuality was irrelevant. “We could not expect that Judge Bennett would rule in our favor on motions to keep his sexual preference out of the case,” Trebilcock remembers. “Al was willing to endure the likely assault Westboro and others would heap on him.”

While Al had scored an early win in the fight to keep his sexuality from overwhelming the case, the prospect wasn’t completely laid to rest. Fear that the court fight would somehow become a referendum on the relationship between Al and Walt haunted those who knew the secret as the proceedings intensified.

***

“Who do you live with?”

The question was put to Al by Jonathan Katz, a lawyer for the Westboro church during Al’s deposition on April 20, 2007. Gathered with Al and Katz around a conference table in a law office in Silver Spring, Md., were Sean Summers, Al’s lawyer, and one of Fred Phelps’s sons, Tim.

“A friend of mine, Walt,” Al replied.

Grandsons of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps demonstrate outside the Supreme Court while justices hear oral arguments in Snyder v. Phelps on Oct. 6, 2010 in Washington, DC. | Getty Images

In response to subsequent questioning, Al revealed that he and Walt had been living together for three and a half years. He testified that he had divorced from Matt’s mother because of “incompatibility.” When asked if he had dated since his divorce, Al said no. “I didn’t want to get into it then,” he now explains. “I was adamant about not letting the case be clouded by my own sexuality.”

Ten days later, Jeffrey Willard, Al’s psychologist, was deposed. Through questioning, Willard testified that he had known Walt because they had both frequented the Talley Ho, a Lancaster, Penn., bar catering to the gay community. This revelation prompted Katz to ask, “Do you know if Walt is gay?” sparking an objection from Trebilcock. An argument then ensued among the lawyers about the relevancy of the question.

When the attorneys could not agree how to proceed with the deposition, an emergency call was placed to Bennett, who again thwarted any questioning that addressed Al’s sexuality. On the call with the judge, Katz persisted, arguing that if Al was gay, the psychological review that Westboro’s expert doctor had performed would need to be changed. In a case seeking damages for emotional distress, Katz argued, Snyder’s sexuality was an issue.

“Let me just cut right to the core,” Bennett said. “There is no reason to file a motion for reconsideration, no reason to ask the question. The court has ruled: One’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with this case.” The following day, Walt was deposed, and when asked about his connection to Al, he replied, “He is a good friend.”

While Walt didn’t elaborate on the full nature and extent of their friendship during his deposition, the fact was that they had met a decade earlier, at a card game. Walt was older by a year. Al recalls that he was immediately attracted to Walt’s looks and personality—his green eyes and gentlemanly demeanor. “One night I was really depressed,” Al remembers, “and he said, ‘Come on, we’ll go out for coffee and just talk.’ One thing led to another and we started talking about homosexuality, and I think the next week was my first experience with him. For the first time in my life, I actually felt that I truly loved somebody. I mean, I loved my wife as much as I could, but with him, I really loved him. There’s no doubt that we would have been together for years. For years.”

After seeing one another for four years, Walt moved in with Al. Al had initially delayed until his children were older and were splitting their time between his home and Julia’s.

Just before the start of the trial, in October 2007, two of Snyder’s five claims (defamation and invasion of privacy) against Westboro were dismissed by Bennett. Left standing for the jury’s consideration were his claims that Westboro engaged in a criminal conspiracy, that its activists had perpetrated an unreasonable intrusion and that the protesters had intentionally inflicted emotional distress. The trial occurred inside the federal courthouse in Baltimore and lasted a week. Each day, Al sat at the plaintiff’s table with his two lawyers. At the adjacent table sat Westboro’s attorney, Katz, along with three children of Fred Phelps. Phelps himself sat behind the defense table, along with his wife and another daughter. Walt was missing. He and Al were fearful that his presence in the courtroom might be a distraction to the jurors, and they agreed that he would be present only on the day that Walt testified. In many respects, the trial was for Westboro a continuation of the attention-grabbing antics first displayed at Matt’s funeral.

“They introduced nine DVDs into evidence,” Al remembers of the Westboro legal team. “The first one was called Thank God for 9/11, and these DVDs were the sickest DVDs that you ever wanted to see. Why they introduced them into evidence we don’t know, but it started out with bin Laden flying the airplanes into the World Trade Center as a cartoon and then it went to actual news footage of people jumping to their death as [church members] stood there and laughed and mocked them and said all these people deserve go to hell and die.”

Later, Al remembers, the Westboro lawyer played videos depicting war footage. “Judge Bennett let me leave the courtroom when they began to play them because one of my lawyers said ‘Look, he can’t take these. He doesn’t want to sit and watch these,’” Al recalls. “I mean you have to remember all of this was still fresh in my head.”

When Al returned to the courtroom after the videos were finished, his lawyers told him that what he had missed had likely just won him the case. Al asked what his lawyers meant, and one of them explained: “Out of the nine jurors sitting there, eight of them just left here in tears.”

When Summers stood to deliver Al’s closing argument, he initially focused on Matt’s funeral. “The defendants stole the dignity and respect right out of Matt’s funeral. Took it away for their own illogical, insane reasons, whatever they may be. It doesn’t really matter what their reasons are. The fact of the matter is they took away the dignity and respect that Matt and his family deserved,” he told the jurors. “If you think about it, it’s just truly disgusting to think about protesting any funeral. But this one, of course, was a military funeral.”

Katz then closed his case on behalf of Westboro by telling the jurors that where Westboro members had refused to apologize for their behavior, he would. “They may not have said sorry about Matthew Snyder dying, but I do.” Katz also sought to blunt the conduct of his clients by arguing that it was nothing personal against the Snyders.

“This is like a daily second job for them,” he said of the church’s activism. “This church as you heard has held over 30,000 pickets in the past 16 to 17 years. This church picketed plenty of soldiers’ funerals long before Matthew Snyder’s funeral and right up to this day. And as you heard from their words, it is nothing personal. There is no animosity.”

Despite claiming there was nothing personal against the Snyders, Katz dropped into his closing argument a passing reference to Walt, referring to the testimony of Al’s “housemate,” before he sought to wrap Westboro in all the protections of the Constitution, reminding the jury that free speech was often hardest to tolerate when it was most unpalatable. “Is the First Amendment needed to protect popular speech, popular religion, speech that no one gets grossed out at, religion that no one calls a cult, religion that no one calls a bunch of whack jobs? That would be a wasted ink.”

Fred Phelps, Jr., son of pastor Fred Phelps, and a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, demonstrates outside the Supreme Court while justices hear oral arguments in Snyder v. Phelps on October 6, 2010 in Washington, DC. | Getty Images

When Katz sat down, Summers offered a final rebuttal. It was a tribute to the father’s defense of his son. “Matt Snyder went on a mission for his country. And he wanted to complete that mission and did everything within his power to complete that mission. They disrupted his funeral. Took the dignity and respect that everyone deserves out of that funeral. Matt passed that baton to his father and gave him the mission of holding them accountable for those actions.”

Here he was interrupted with an objection from Katz, which was quickly overruled. Summers finished by telling the jurors: “After that baton was passed to Al Snyder, he had to go through the civil process, and that’s why you’re here. When I’m done talking, the baton is in your hands. It’s your decision. It’s your mission to carry out justice. Thank you.”

The prognostication of Al’s lawyers after the videos played was correct—the jury returned with a verdict in Al’s favor, awarding him $2.9 million in compensatory damages and $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy, plus an additional $2 million in intentional infliction of emotional distress, for a total of $10.9 million . Bennett reduced the amount of the punitive damages from $8 million to $2.1 million. Westboro appealed the verdict.

***

Despite the intense interest of national media in a trial that revolved around homophobic slurs, the relationship between Al and Walt remained a secret—but not without effort on Al’s part. After Matt died and in the midst of the litigation, Al went to his neighbors and told them: “If anybody comes to you with questions about me or Walt, please just tell them you don’t know anything.”

There were, however, a few close calls, such as when a reporter and photographer from Time came to the home Al shared with Walt. “During the interview, we talked about the Westboro videos, and the reporter said to me, ‘Just out of curiosity, you said you still have those tapes. Can I see what the DVDs look like’?”

“Well, I went to put the DVD in, turned on the TV, and Walt had left a gay porn in there. I leaped in front of the television. The photographer was obviously gay, he was very flamboyant, and I saw his eyes widen, but the writer was kind of looking down and didn’t see. Walt got home, and I’m like ‘Goddammit, how many times have I told you, what if the kids come here and turn that on?’”

According to Al, Walt had always seemed more confident in his sexuality. In fact, for most of his life, Al did not consider himself gay. To him, bisexual seemed a more accurate label. It wasn’t until he was older and met Walt that he was sure of his proclivities.

“It was funny growing up Catholic. I can remember lying in bed at night, and I was very young, and I would say my prayers and I would say, ‘Dear God, don’t make me have these thoughts. I want to wake up normal like everybody else tomorrow. I don’t want to be called a sissy or anything like that.’ I can remember praying to God to make me like women. It was really strange, I mean many times I would be to the point I would be laying there crying in tears and it’s funny because I talk to so many friends and they had the same experiences because back then, I mean you got caught doing something like that you were, you were insane.”

Al now says he never strayed during his marriage. He claims that it was only after the marriage experienced problems that he had other desires, focused on men, not women. That’s when he began to realize that perhaps he’d been covering up his true identity. Al maintains that even after later figuring out that he was gay, Julia, much to her credit, never made it an issue or a source of embarrassment. “We never discussed it. Never. My ex-wife is a very private person.”

It was, however, a subject that he discussed with his children, including Matt. “My oldest daughter, Sarah, was the first one to know, and I sat down with her and we talked. And it was very funny, because she had a friend who was going through the same thing. Her mother and father divorced, and her father was also gay so that’s how we got on the subject with her about me being gay, talking about that, and then with Matt it was quite different.

“Tracie, my youngest one, we were sitting at the dinner table one night, and she said to me, and Walt was sitting there, and she said ‘So Dad, when are you going to tell me you and Mr. Walt are more than friends?’ And I looked at her, and she said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Dad, I know,’ and she laughed and went home like it was nothing.”

“And all their friends, they knew Walt and I were gay.” Al now says of his kids.“They had no problem. It was like, ‘Wow, this is such a different generation.’ I mean, I’m sure there were some that said something behind their backs at times about their father being gay, but for the most part Walt and I didn’t advertise it, and we weren’t the type of gay couple that, when the kids were there, I would have my arm around him or he’d have my arm.”

Three years before Matt’s enlistment, he raised the subject with his father.

“One night when Matt was about 14, we were sitting down, and he always liked Walt. He didn’t know what was going on with Walt, but he liked Walt. Walt and him did things, and one night we were sitting there. It was just he and I, and he said to me, ‘Is Mr. Walt gay, Dad?’ and I was like, ‘Oh here it comes,’ and I said, ‘Well, would it make a difference?’ And he said, ‘Kind of, some ways.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, kind of, some ways?’ He said, ‘Well, if you were gay, it would make a difference,’ and I always said to myself, ‘If my kids ask, I’m not going to lie.’ And I said, ‘Matt, Mr. Walt is gay, and I am gay as well.’”

Al asked Matt whether Matt thought he was gay. “Oh no, I’m not,” said the future Marine. “I like women, I like girls, Dad.” Al remembers he then asked his son when he decided that he liked girls. “He kind of just looked at me funny, and he said, ‘What do you mean?’” Al remembers, “I said, ‘Well, when did you make up your mind that you wanted to be with girls?’ And he said, ‘I didn’t really make up my mind. It’s just the way it is,’ and I looked at him and I didn’t say a word and he said, ‘I get it.’” Al then told his son, “I struggled with this all my life.”

Al is certain his son was a heterosexual. And for that reason, there’s an irony in his efforts. After all, there was Westboro trying to subject his son’s memory to ridicule and scorn by suggesting that Matt was gay when he was not—and his father was. “If you never heard of Westboro Baptist Church and you were driving past a funeral and you saw a sign that said ‘Semper Fi Fag,’ wouldn’t the first that came to mind be this soldier must have been gay?” Al now asks.

(When we met, I told Snyder that years ago, as an attorney, I had represented plaintiffs in defamation cases and that I’ve been wondering more recently whether these days calling a heterosexual person a homosexual is necessarily slanderous. Maybe we’ve evolved enough in our thinking not to see such a label as an attack? “Half the country wouldn’t agree with you,” was his quick reply. )

Al won the first round, but Westboro quickly appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where argument was held in front of a three-judge panel on Dec. 2, 2008. The following September, Al got word that his trial verdict had been overturned. And what was more, as the losing party in federal litigation, he was now responsible for Westboro’s court costs, totaling nearly $16,500 for the appellate process alone. Westboro subsequently requested that Judge Bennett order Al to reimburse an additional $93,000 for the church’s original trial costs, an issue that is still not resolved. That Al was suddenly looking at debt in the tens of thousands of dollars again made his predicament national news. Among those who promised to come to Al’s financial aid was Bill O’Reilly, the conservative Fox News host, who offered to pay the entire amount Al owed. And he wasn’t the only celebrity who’d offered to help.

“I remember a few days after the federal trial I got a call from a well-known country music star,” Al remembers. “He said to me, ‘How much is this going to cost you out of your pocket?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, you’d have to talk to my attorneys.’ I think about a week later we got a check from him for more than $20,000, but he didn’t want anybody to know he did it. He said he had two reasons for doing it: His father was both military and a minister.”

There was little doubt that Al would try to take his appellate loss to the Supreme Court. This time, Walt was at his side. When the argument was held on Oct. 6, 2010, the two men sat together in the Supreme Court, along with Al’s daughters and his two sisters. By then, Walt was walking with a cane, having been told he was suffering rheumatoid arthritis. “Several of the Phelpses showed up wearing shirts that said ‘Jews killed Christ.’ I was surprised they were allowed in court like that,” Al recalls. “And when the oral argument ended, the Westboro contingent gathered outside the court and sang Ozzy Osborne’s ‘Crazy Train.’”

One month after the argument, Walt was diagnosed with lung cancer. His diagnosis was terminal. “He told me God has to let him live to hear the decision, he wouldn’t be that cruel,” Al remembers. That wish came true, though the decision wasn’t the one they had hoped for.

On March 2, 2011, a near-unanimous Supreme Court ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion for the 8-1 majority. “Whether the First Amendment prohibits holding Westboro Baptist liable for its speech in this case turns largely on whether the speech is of public or private concern,” Roberts wrote, noting that Westboro’s speech concerned matters of public controversy and that its protest of Matt’s funeral was held on public land governed by local law enforcement. “Such space occupies a special position in terms of First Amendment protection,” he wrote.

“While these messages may fall short of refined social or political commentary, the issues they highlight—the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our nation, homosexuality in the military, and scandals involving the Catholic clergy—are matters of public import,” he added.

Roberts acknowledged the hurtful nature of the speech and questioned its contribution to the public discourse, but he said the answer was not to punish the speaker. “As a nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate,” he wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter, wrote that signs such as “God hates fags” could be viewed as an attack on Matthew Snyder’s sexuality and said the First Amendment does not enable the right to “brutalize” private individuals. Alito expressed concern that the ruling would only encourage Westboro’s “outrageous” behavior. “This is the strategy that they have routinely employed—and that they will now continue to employ—inflicting severe and lasting emotional injury on an ever growing list of innocent victims,” Alito wrote in his dissenting opinion.

At an impromptu news conference back at his home in Pennsylvania, Al told the press he was disappointed. “My first thought was eight justices don’t have the common sense God gave a goat,” Al said. “We found out today we can no longer bury our dead in this country with dignity.”

The day after the decision, Al received an email telling him not to worry about “the Phelps” for they would be “taken care of.” Al called his lawyer, Sean Summers, who in turn notified the attorney general of Kansas, Stephen Six, reporting what sounded like a death threat. Six had filed a brief in support of Al in the Supreme Court that was joined by the attorneys general of 47 other states. Where the two men had recently stood united in trying to hold Westboro accountable for disrupting Matt’s funeral, they now found themselves working together to prevent harm from coming to Fred Phelps and his family.

That act of compassion was not reciprocated. Last December, long after the legal battle had ended, Al became aware of a Westboro website called GodHatesTheMedia, which contained a mocking, hateful “albert snyder” bio. Within the screed there was reference to Walt, the only published reference that Al has ever seen to the relationship with his partner. (“All this while he moved in with his ‘house mate’—a simpering swishing queer-as-a-three dollar-bill open fag.”)

Those weeks after the Supreme Court defeat were tough for Al. He had lost his son. He had lost his legal case. And he knew now he was about to lose the one person he had loved more than any other. When the end came, Al was joined at Walt’s bedside by his daughter, and Matt’s sister, Sarah.

“Matt is here now,” Sarah said to Walt. “Grab his hand, Dad.”

Her reference to “Dad” was not to Al. It was to Walt. Sarah believed she had two fathers. Within seconds of her speaking those words, Walt had left—to join Matt.