Westboro Baptist and freedom of speech (2)

In one of the ironies of American political thought, the P.C. left is trying to out-Alito Alito on Snyder v. Phelps. Many commenters say that what Westboro Baptist Church did was hate speech and that hate speech is (for some unspecified reason) not free speech. I believe that we are playing a dangerous game if we adopt this argument, as homophobes increasingly characterize any disagreement with their goals as hate speech against them.