http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124452969&ps=cprs
"The Supreme Court is getting involved in the legal fight over the anti-gay protesters who show up at military funerals with inflammatory messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers."..."
These church-based protestors are not looked at by most with kind eyes. A lot of people consider their picketing at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as rude, wrong, insensitive, and mean, but is their protest protected under the First Amendment?
Albert Snyder, father of a deceased marine, was awarded damages by a Baltimore Jury for the emotional distress the picketers caused him at his son's funeral. The verdict was thrown out by an appeals court, though. "...The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs contained "imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric" protected by the First Amendment."
The Snyder v. Phelps case will begin this fall.
I am outraged that there are people out there who would even think about doing this. I do not think that funeral is any place for a protest, but I definitely think that a soldier's funeral is the last place someone should be protesting. For these people to think it is ok or that they are doing a good thing by intruding on funerals of people who gave their lives for them I believe is a sign of some mental issues. And as far as their rights are being protected under the first Amendment they would not have those rights if it were not for people who serve in the armed forces. I think that the Supreme Court needs to look at that instead of turning away the case because of their rights.
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/hbo/2010/mar/09/funeral-flap/
Here is a link to another anti-war group who protested at funeral. This group was a Baptist Church headed by Fred Phelps and they actually came to a funeral of soldiers from Iowa and protested the war. They were also anti-gay groups and said that 9/11 was a sign that God was upset with America. There was a Motorcycle group called Soldiers Angles that would go to the funeral that they herd Phelps would be protesting at and set up a barrier so that the protestors could not get close to the funerals. My Uncle is retired Navy and was part of Soldiers Angles and I am proud that there are people out there fighting these protests.
Well, I have mixed feelings about this topic. Do they have the freedom of speech and assembly? Yes. However, does that make it morally right to protest at a funeral? Absolutely not. Does protests interfere with the rights of mourners? That's a big yes. Doing a search on "Funeral" and "Protest", all you'll find is articles and references to Westboro Baptist Church doing these protests.
Looking at potential laws to deter these protests, the government could easily use the 1969 Federal Civil Rights Law. To sum it up, anyone caught intimidating, injuring, interefering, or attempts to, by force due to race, religion, ect. in a government funded location can be fined and/or imprisoned for a year.
If these people want to continue protesting against homosexuals and soldiers during processions, I'm sure they're also willing to be fined and imprisoned for it as well. If not, then maybe they'll find a better way to spread their message: like at the funeral's of their own loved ones...
This seems to be an appropriate topic to comment on, seeing as the WBC was scheduled to be here last week. This type of thing makes me sick. I understand that they have rights, freedom of speech and assembly, etc. Yet, they are protesting limiting someone else's rights. By protesting their right to be gay, or enlist in the military, they are attempting to strip others of their rights. I became personally invested in the topic of oppression of homosexuality, my junior year in high school. I went to a small private school, where a good friend of mine was openly gay. After posting a picture of himself kissing another boy on Facebook, he was promptly suspended. We always called it Sus-spelled, because he was told he was not to come back to school until he renounced homosexuality. For obvious reasons, he didn't do that, and spent the last 3 months of his senior year, at home doing his homework. I was outraged by this, even more so after I got called into the Principal's office to have a forced discussion with the boys who turned my friend in. I do not know why they picked me, but they did. To this day, I am disgusted with the administrators of that school and ever since them I have felt for the homosexual community because people can be truly cruel, looking at the splinter in another's eye without acknowledging the plank in their own eye.
P.S.
Don't go to the Westboro Church Website, it used to be that every time you visit their website, they receive money from a sponsor. I do not have infinitive proof on this, this is just what I was told.