From the Washington Post:

CHICAGO — At least five Midwestern states are considering legislation to ban protests at funerals in response to demonstrations by the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church, who have been protesting at funerals of Iraq war casualties because they say the deaths are God’s punishment for U.S. tolerance toward gays.

Though the soldiers were not gay, the protesters say the deaths, as well as Hurricane Katrina, recent mining disasters and other tragedies are God’s signs of displeasure. They also protested at the memorial service for the 12 West Virginia miners who died in the Sago Mine.

“The families weren’t able to bury their loved ones in peace,” said Kansas state Sen. Jean Schodorf, who has proposed legislation. “We felt pretty strongly that we needed to do something about it.”

Kansas already has a law banning demonstrations at funerals, but Schodorf said the existing law is vague and hard to enforce. The proposed bill would keep protesters 300 feet away from any funeral or memorial service and ban demonstrations within one hour before or two hours after a service.

Legislators in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Oklahoma are looking at similar bills. Proposed legislation in Indiana would keep protesters 500 feet from funerals, and make a violation a felony punishable by a three-year prison term and a $10,000 fine.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. Anyone who goes to a soldier’s funeral to protest and express their anti-war rhetoric is usually the type of scumbag who takes pleasure in the death of a soldier to begin with. One less cog in the american militaristic imperial regime. Surely you’ve heard it all before. And surely you agree, if you’re any kind of rational human being, that soldiers (and everyone else on earth for that matter) have a right to a dignified and peaceful burial after their death.

That being said, the idea of legislating how much someone or some group is allowed to say at a soldier’s funeral seems counter to the very thing soldiers are fighting for in the first place.

I get angry when I read stories like this, just like you do. I get angry that someone would pick the moment when a family is most grieved to show up and act like assholes, but the last thing I think we need to start doing is legislating behavior that’s otherwise legal. It’s legal to protest outside a funeral. It’s legal to sling nasty words at families and insult the ones that are being buried. It’s also protected under the constitution as long as it’s on public property.

So why the sudden burst of interest in controlling protesters?

Popularity. One Illinois blogger is happy to see this sort of thing happening:

I don’t usually like to stand behind many of the laws created here in Illinois as they are mainly liberal in nature. However, I stand behind this law fully and completely. I was born and raised in Illinois and the longer I live here, the more disgusted I become with the politics of this state. Granted, I understand Chicago is a major city in the U.S. and is driven by democrats. What sickens me is how silent the conservative Republicans are about issues like this. Chicago is also the home of the NAACP and Operation Rainbow Push which is headed by Jesse Jackson. Where are you Conservative Illinoisians?!?!?

And don’t even get me going on the comments section. It would seem that many so-called conservative voices have no problem letting nanny decide what speech is okay as long as they’re apparently on the side they want to “win.”

The government should not be legislating where you’re allowed to exercise your constitutional right to free speech. I’d hazard a guess that most of the people who are supportive of this type of legislation believe that making protesting outside abortion clinics a punishable offense is a great tragedy in our time.

What was that saying about glass houses and stones?

via Camp Katrina

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