On a Saturday in May, 2003, hundreds of people gathered in Heinz Hall, in Pittsburgh, to remember Fred Rogers—Mr. Rogers, as he was known to children who gained a sense that the universe had some kindly order to it from the way he put on his cardigan sweater. Rogers had died a couple of months earlier, twelve days before his third grandchild was born; the baby was there, joined by his older cousins. Others present included Teresa Heinz Kerry; Eric Carle, the author of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”; and Matthew Laver, a student at the School for Blind Children, whose mother said that Rogers used to sing to him. A Presbyterian minister presided; Rogers, though his life’s work was in television, had been ordained in the church, too. And there was a “surprise guest,” the Post-Gazette reported: “violinist Itzhak Perlman, who played a gavotte by Bach in memory of Rogers.”

Outside the hall was a group of people whose presence was, at that point, not a surprise, though they certainly were not guests. They were there representing the Westboro Baptist Church, whose leader, Fred Phelps, had been talking for some time about how Mr. Rogers was in hell. (Mr. Rogers’s role in that had something to do with “tolerance.”) About a week after Rogers’s death, as Tony Norman, a Post-Gazette columnist, put it, “Phelps had faxed a manifesto to local news organizations explaining why he hates Mr. Rogers.” Norman called Phelps, who told him that Rogers “gave aid and comfort to homosexuals. … His syrupy teachings led millions astray. He was a wuss and he was an enabler of wusses.” So Phelps had been talking up the protest for months, although, in the end, there were only about half a dozen people in the Westboro contingent, carrying signs with ugly messages and a torn American flag. One was an eight-year-old girl. There were about a hundred and fifty counter-protestors.

Now Phelps is dead, at the age of eighty-four. The protest at Rogers’s memorial got a mention in Phelps’s obituaries, though it was by no means a solitary event; he brought his little hateful whirligig to the funerals of everyone from Frank Sinatra to Barry Goldwater. But those are public people, who at least had structures around them for dealing with craziness. The most painful protests—that is almost too dignified a word—were at the funerals of people Phelps heard were gay and of the American service members whose deaths Phelps called a welcome move on God’s part, punishing us all for homosexuality. The family of Matthew Snyder, a Marine killed in Iraq, sued; the case went to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion for the majority in Snyder v. Phelps, quoted some of the signs that the Westboro church members were carrying:

The placards read “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “America is Doomed,” “Don’t Pray for the USA,” “Thank God for IEDs,” “Fag Troops,” “Semper Fi Fags,” “God Hates Fags,” “Maryland Taliban,” “Fags Doom Nations,” “Not Blessed Just Cursed,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “Pope in Hell,” “Priests Rape Boys,” “You’re Going to Hell,” and “God Hates You.”

Roberts continued,

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.

The signs, Roberts added, with notable understatement, “certainly convey Westboro’s position on those issues.” This was protected First Amendment speech. (There were limits on demonstrations at funerals, in terms of how close protestors could get, and local ordinances which, the opinion noted, Phelps and company had observed, in that case if not others.) Roberts was joined by every other justice but Alito, in a case that, however repulsed one is by Phelps, was properly decided—partly because of how repulsed one is. Recoiling, one can lose one’s constitutional bearings. It is very easy to see how a Supreme Court decision that went against Phelps could have been used against all manner of protestors. That’s not to say that Phelps himself gets points for that; it would be too much to call the decision his accomplishment.

One unpleasant thing about Fred Phelps was the way in which he and his church members brought children to their protests and had them hold placards like the ones that Roberts quoted, and repeat slogans slurring gay people and praising divine killings. They tended to be Phelps’s own children or grandchildren—how else would you find an eight-year-old to damn Mr. Rogers?—and the bulk of his parishioners were his relatives. The obituaries refer to complicated loyalties and estrangements, but then, those of some very good people do, too. But one can see, in the hanging of hateful signs on children, the very opposite of Fred Rogers’s life’s project, which was to treat young people both morally and as serious moral actors. Mr. Rogers spoke of the intense drama of one’s earliest years, Supreme Court cases or no, and the way that friendship, above all, was orienting. Of the two Freds, he’s the one who endures. Phelps, and all his vitriol, will spin away.

Photograph of Fred Phelps by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty.