Mo. funeral-protest bill sent to governor

[Judi Lynn]

Mo. funeral-protest bill sent to governor

By The Associated Press
02.23.06

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri House this week approved a bill banning protests near funerals an hour before to an hour after a service, sending the measure to the governor.

The legislation, a response to a recent protest at the St. Joseph funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq, sets no limit on how close protesters can get. But lawmakers said that before the session ends in May, they plan to pass a second measure specifically prohibiting protests within 300 feet of a funeral.

Missouri is one of at least 14 states considering restrictions on funeral protests because of the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan. The church, led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, claims soldiers are being killed as divine retribution because the United States tolerates gays.

Legislators in Maryland are scheduled to consider a funeral-protest bill tomorrow and lawmakers in Kansas and Oklahoma have moved similar measures forward this week.
(snip/...)

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=16532

[izzie]

1. We seem to be back to the Blue Law days,.

Hunt around and I bet lots of those are still on the books.

[Left Coast Lynn]

2. Freedom of speech

It's hard to see protests at a funeral, but our right of free speech has to take priority!

[trogdor]

3. How about the freedom to kick someone's ass?

I'm as much a First Amendment advocate as anyone here, but if Phelps is allowed to do whatever the hell he wants, bad things will happen. We already have motorcycle gangs providing security for funerals where Phelps' people have been sighted. At what point do you say, "enough is enough," and remove these jackasses by any means necessary?

There is a saying that your rights end where my nose begins.

[Left Coast Lynn]

6. How about the freedom to kick someone's ass?

It's a freedom you don't have.

Look you can enforce trespassing laws or arrest them if they actually impede the funeral. But restricting them to a great distance would effectively kill their right to protest.

[Hawkeye-X]

9. Welcome to DU!

Another Lynn around!

You'll find the most prominent Lynns around here. :)

(Though I'm not one)

[Left Coast Lynn]

12. LOL

Thanks, I'll try to live up to the others!

[iverglas]

17. I give up

restricting them to a great distance would effectively kill their right to protest.

What "right" does anyone have to protest a funeral?

A funeral is not a political event, particularly if the individual whose death is being memorialized was not any sort of public figure. Neither he nor his family and friends did anything that the Phelps brigade wishes to protest.

They're not protesting the funeral. They're not expressing any ideas about the person who died or about anything else connected with the funeral. They're EXPLOITING an occasion to get media attention for themselves and their views about something that has nothing to do with the funeral. And they're causing misery to people who have done nothing to bring misery on themselves.

There just might be some occasions that a civilized society does not have to PERMIT anyone to exploit for his/her own purposes, particularly when such purposes are so obviously and diametrically contrary to the purposes of people who are in no way fair game for anyone's nastiness.

You are not permitted to stand on the streetcorner shouting obscenities at your neighbour's window at midnight -- not trespassing, are you? not impeding anyone's passage? -- and I'm afraid that I just don't see any meaningful distinction between that and what Phelps does. In fact, that looks pretty much exactly like what Phelps does.

Of course, you could also try standing outside a funeral shouting random obscenities and see how long you can stay there before a friendly constable removes you. You see a difference between you in that scenario and Phelps? Not with a magnifying glass, I don't.



How about the freedom to kick someone's ass?
It's a freedom you don't have.

Yeah? And that would be because ...?

It would be because we all got together and decided we weren't going to tolerate people kicking each other's asses, that's why.

And we can just as well get together and decide we aren't going to tolerate people exploiting others' private sorrow for their own unrelated ends and inflicting misery on them. There really are limits to what a civilized society has to tolerate in the name of liberty.

[Tempest]

8. Here's hoping...

The motorcycle gangs go Hell's Angels on their asses.

[BOSSHOG]

4. Welcome Left Coast Lynn

I'm leary of any laws that would inhibit a constitutional liberty like freedom of speech; therefore I would oppose the effort. However I would strongly urge large burly members of a grieving family to take the matter in hands physically. Phelps does not want me at a funeral that he chooses to picket.

[mitchtv]

13. Make sure his witnesses see nothing

like a foot on their insteps and a little ahem, shove. A hatpin in the ass etc

[MadMaddie]

18. What's going to happen is....

Some of the deceased soldiers military brothers or sisters who are already under stress and duress from their time in Iraq are going to snap when they see these protesters..

I predict before this year is over....and the more funerals these nuts protest....someone from the military is going to remove the problem.

I hate to say it but it's heading down that path....

[FSogol]

5. Why not just arrest Phelps and his clownish followers? n/t

[Tempest]

7. Under what law?

This law will give them the legal right to arrest them.

[FSogol]

10. Creating a public nuisance or disturbance? If I went into a Church

and began shouting, wouldn't I be removed and arrested? How is what Phelps is doing any different?

[Tempest]

11. You wouldn't be arrested

If you were standing on public property, like the sidewalk.

Public nuisance laws are rarely enforced and are difficult to prosecute.

[MadHound]

14. This is wrong, and we will probably come to regret it in the future

Part of the burden of free speech is that free speech is guaranteed for everybody, even those we disagree with. If we limit free speech in order to silence those with whom we disagree, then at some point those limitations will come back and bite us.

[Turbineguy]

15. He can protest the Government

No problem.

Phelps is protesting private citizens.

The fact that he protests funerals just shows he's a scumbag.

[readmoreoften]

16. So do the klan have the right to stand on the sidewalks

in front of the houses of jewish and african american children and tell them that they're scum and that god hates them?

[saigon68]

19. Yup