Outrage at Funeral Protests Pushes Lawmakers to Act

[dogday]

NASHVILLE, April 11 — As dozens of mourners streamed solemnly into church to bury Cpl. David A. Bass, a fresh-faced 20-year-old marine who was killed in Iraq on April 2, a small clutch of protesters stood across the street on Tuesday, celebrating his violent death.

"Thank God for Dead Soldiers," read one of their placards. "Thank God for I.E.D.'s," read another, a reference to the bombs used to kill service members in the war. To drive home their point — that God is killing soldiers to punish America for condoning homosexuality — members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., a tiny fundamentalist splinter group, kicked around an American flag and shouted, if someone approached, that the dead soldiers were rotting in hell.

Since last summer, a Westboro contingent, numbering 6 to 20 people, has been showing up at the funerals of soldiers with their telltale placards, chants and tattered American flags. The protests, viewed by many as cruel and unpatriotic, have set off a wave of grass-roots outrage and a flurry of laws seeking to restrict demonstrations at funerals and burials.

"Repugnant, outrageous, despicable, do not adequately describe what I feel they do to these families," said Representative Steve Buyer, an Indiana Republican who is a co-sponsor of a Congressional bill to regulate demonstrations at federal cemeteries. "They have a right to freedom of speech. But someone also has a right to bury a loved one in peace."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/us/17picket.html?ex=1302926400&en=fa00fcbce509da8b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. While I appreciate that action is being taken...

It's a day late and several dollars short. This whacko has been picketing funerals for more than a decade; when he was doing the funerals of gay people, the lawmakers just shook their heads and proclaimed, "The First Amendment."

Apparently, gay people don't deserve any kind of protection. Then again, lawmakers (Democrats as well as Republicans) have demonstrated that over and over again.

[BeeBee]

3. My thoughts exactly.

I'm glad that they're doing something but they're too late.

[wordpix2]

2. I don't often agree with repukes but I agree with Rep. Buyer (R-IN)

"Repugnant, outrageous, despicable, do not adequately describe what I feel they do to these families," said Representative Steve Buyer, an Indiana Republican who is a co-sponsor of a Congressional bill to regulate demonstrations at federal cemeteries. "They have a right to freedom of speech. But someone also has a right to bury a loved one in peace."

[rhett o rick]

4. I agree with you but would add......those Republicans that are sending

our family members (not theirs) to die for their political and financial gains are (in his words) "Repugnant, outrageous, despicable,". Stop the war and the protests will stop.

[heart of darkness]

6. Would Rep. Buyer please show me where

the "right to bury a loved one in peace" shows up in the Constitution. I can't seem to find that in my version. Maybe its next to the exception that says the president can spy on Americans sans warrant.

The Westboro people are idiots and bastards, but they should have the right to protest just like we should have the right to have our anti-war signs up in *'s face (even though that right is being trampled by the secret service).

[rhett o rick]

5. I am betting Karl Rove is behind these protests. He is "Repugnant,

outrageous and dispicable".