Posted on 03/30/2010 3:01:27 PM PDT by Mrs. Frogjerk
But towns could be slow in giving them their permits. Find a way to lose them or take their time in giving them their permit. I’m just saying. The funeral could be over before the WBC gets their permit.
On May 24, 2006, the United States House and Senate passed the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act, which President Bush signed five days later. The act bans protests within 300 feet of national cemeteries—which numbered 122 when the bill was signed—from an hour before a funeral to an hour after it. Violators face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.[85]
As of April 2006, at least 17 states have banned protests near funeral sites immediately before and after ceremonies, or are considering it. These are: Illinois,[86][87] Indiana,[88] Iowa,[89] Kansas,[90] Kentucky,[91] Louisiana,[92] Maryland,[93] Michigan,[94] Missouri,[95] which passed the law, and Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma,[96] South Carolina,[97] South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.[98] Florida increased the penalty for disturbing military funerals, amending a previous ban on the disruption of lawful assembly.[99]
These bans have been contested. Bart McQueary, having protested with Phelps on at least three occasions,[100] filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Kentucky’s funeral protest ban. On September 26, 2006, a district court agreed and entered an injunction prohibiting the ban from being enforced.[100] In the opinion, the judge wrote:
“ Sections 5(1)(b) and (c) restrict substantially more speech than that which would interfere with a funeral or that which would be so obtrusive that funeral participants could not avoid it. Accordingly, the provisions are not narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest but are instead unconstitutionally overbroad. ”
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Missouri on behalf of Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church to overturn the ban on the picketing of soldier’s funerals.[101] The ACLU of Ohio also filed a similar lawsuit.[102]
Phelps bunch remind me of the huckster crowd....let em all rot!
We are talking about free speech. Don’t bring up rape.
Try reading the 14th Amendment.
The Phelps gang might be “abusing” the First Amendment, true, but they are protected by the 1st and 14th Amendments. He’s hardly “holding the country hostage”.
It’s an extremely slippery slope. Don’t buy into the “reasonable restrictions” argument, or the Obama bunch (or a socialist State by your analysis) will shut down Free Republic, mark my words!
>> I wonder if Phelps is so ardent in his protests because he is ... overcompensating for his own gender preferences? Sort of like the star football player manly man who likes men.
Just a question, certainly not an assertion of anything untoward. <<
Just need counter protests against him with signs reading “Fred is Projecting” and “Phelps is a Self Loathing Homo”. That ought to fix his bucket.
Either that or “invite” him to a funeral somewhere in a backwoods town in arkansas where you have a backwoods sherif who’s son died in Iraq or afganistan and let nature take it’s course. :)
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