Several states are working on laws to limit protestors at soldier funerals. The protestors aren’t ultra liberals mad at President Bush for leading us to war in Iraq. The protestors the law is directed at are religious conservatives led by crazy Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.
Phelps group shows up at funerals of soldiers who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan and protest that the troops have died as punishment from God aimed at the US which harbors homosexuals.
Starting 10 years ago Phelps and his nut brigade picketed funerals of people who died from AIDS.
Naturally, grieving families don’t care for the pickets.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps’s daughter and a lawyer for the church, said states cannot interfere with their message that the soldiers had been struck down by God because they were fighting for a country that harbors homosexuals and adulterers.
Lawmakers are ”trying to introduce something that will make them feel better about the holes we’re punching in the facade they live under,” Phelps-Roper said. ”If they pass a law that gets in our way, they will be violating the Constitution, and we will sue them.”
Among the states considering such measures: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Some of the bills specify noisy, disruptive behavior, or signs with ”fighting words,” as in Wisconsin. Some bar protests within one or two hours before or after a funeral starts; others specify distances ranging from 10 car lengths to five blocks away; some include both.
You know you’ve gone off the deep end when even regular people try to outlaw you.
