A couple of other people have said they are.
Really? Well, in my comment above, all I said was that Phelps and his crew were attacking the dead. That is what they’re doing, is it not?
Much of what Phelps’N’Friends do at funerals certainly seems to fall into speech that incites disorder, or whatever the Hell the legal term is for that sort of thing.
Having said that, a funeral to me seems to met to be a private matter, whether said funeral takes place on public lands or not. If the feds and unis can define “free speech zones” so as to preserve the proper and order of the setting of the protest, then this principle applies to these funerals.
The First Amendment specifically protects the right to peacably assemble and protest. What Phelps’N’Friends does at funerals and at Walter Reed isn’t peacable, and is certainly inciting disorder, and certainly disrupts the proper operations at these places.
The one single fucking time that you get to say goodbye to your decedant should not be disrupted by protestors, period.
But how many of us like the “free speech zone” idea?
The dead can’t be “attacked.” The familes are being harrassed. The dead people are just rotting meat.
Welll, probably because I’m a pudgy academic librarian who last lifted weights or ran miles during the early days of the Clinton administration and protecting obnoxious, right-wing zealots against enraged bikers is just not my specialty. It’s not like I would pity Phelps if this were to happen. I’d be jumping for joy. I’d be positively capering with glee. My views on his constitutional right to protest have nothing to do with my personal opinion of the man.
You know, I’m typing this right now, imagining the scenario, and now that I think about it, I probably would step in, or at least call for help. I’m pretty good at diffusing situations, or so I’ve heard, and I would feel kind of guilty if I didn’t raise a finger.
I still don’t like Phred.
Very well said, and it more or less sums up my viewpoint on the whole matter. How often will you hear me say that about a Diogenes post?
(Goes off to look for the rip in the space/time continuum)
The funerals are being held on public land–but the only reason they’re being held on public land is because the deceased died as part of a government function. The funeral itself is an extension of this government function, isn’t it? Isn’t having these funerals part and parcel of the military’s operation? Because if it’s not, why are my tax dollars going to support military cemeteries?
Assuming that the funerals are a necessary part of teh government’s function, disrupting the funerals is disrupting a government function. This is one of the cases in which speech rights are traditionally curtailed. You can’t start protesting in a courtroom–hell, you can’t even call a judge a Tool of the Capitalist Oppressors in the middle of a trial, for fear of contempt-of-court jailtime. Can similar reasoning apply to preventing the disruption of military funerals?
If this argument is valid, it establishes a means for distinguishing between military funerals and the funerals of gay civilians: the latter funerals, however important, are not government functions, and disrupting them is merely assholish, not the disruption of a government function.
That said, I like the fundraiser idea.
Daniel
Man, that is a stretch!
I guess it depends on how you define “peace”. If no one was physically hurt, you’re just opening up a can of worms regarding which words are considered dangerous. Pretty soon all your freedom of speech rights are in jeopardy. How do you determine when the speech is hurtful? It will never be exactly the same in any two situations. How do you hold up the constitutional rights of everyone when you’re specifically trying to legislate good words and bad words?
What if Phelps and his clan stood there silently with signs or t-shirts? Would you say he’s not allowed to stand on public property?
Why?
Daniel
I’m not even remotely familiar with all laws, so how about if permits were required in advance for funeral protests, with very specific allowed times and places. Then funeral arrangements could, in theory, either be kept quiet or changed so that the protesters are waaaaay over there points while the funeral is over here.
Okay, it probably wouldn’t work. But it would amuse me to see WBC protesting at the wrong cemetery.
I also disagree with Phelps and think he’s scum. However, it’s more important to me that we rigorously protect the right of individuals to speak, especially if their speech is offensive to us.
Upsetting, certainly, but unreasonably disrupt? As soon as the funeral’s over, the offensive speech ends. People go home, perhaps upset, but we don’t have a right to be protected from upsetting speech.
Perhaps I have no reasons to offer. But that’s irrelevant. It’s up to the individual who is speaking to determine for himself or herself whether he or she has something valuable to say. The rest of us can ignore him, but we can’t stop him.
Again, the most offensive speech must be most vigorously defended.
Which, from Phelps’s point of view, may completely rob his message of any meaning.
No one is being harmed physicially. Peaceable doesn’t mean polite; it just means non-violent.
Why is a funeral essential? Not everyone has funerals. People can and have often been be buried or cremated with no public ceremony.
Why is it an essential government function? The government hasn’t always provided funerals for those killed in battle. In the past, the government left it up to families to provide for funerals if they wished.
How is it being disrupted? The funeral still happens.
Not everyone has religious services, but we pay for chaplains in the army to provide religious services to folks who are fulfilling a government function. The religious service of a funeral is, in one sense, the final religious government functioned performed on behalf of a soldier. However, funerals perform their main function for the living: I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that taxpayer-funded military funerals serve the purpose of increasing morale for current soldiers. (If they don’t, I repeat: why are my tax dollars paying for them?)
As such, it’s a government function. If we’re going to continue paying for them, we’ve got a vested interest in not seeing them disrupted.
How are they disrupted? The central means by which a funeral carries out its function is by providing a space for people to express grief, remember the departed, and join in fellowship with the survivors. SUrely you can see how having a crowd of people rejoicing nastily in the death of the soldier and declaring God’s hatred for you will disrupt that means?
Daniel
I realize the jerks-o’-the-moment are harassing the survivors. What I was trying to allude to is that Phelps and his ilk, as far as I know, don’t actually make disparaging comments about the survivors. They make them about the dead people; you know, the ones who can’t respond.
I still don’t get why causing a ruckus at someone’s funeral should be permitted. I guess I never will understand that.
Causing ruckuses (provided that “ruckus” means speech) is a constitutionally protected right. Not being annoyed by a ruckus while attending a funeral on or close to public property is not a constitutionally protected right.
I agree that disparagement is of the dead, I’m just saying the harm is done to the survivors. I don’t believe the dead can be harmed. I guess this is probably just a semantic objection. No reason to belabor it.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “ruckus,” but if it’s on public property, the government is not allowed to prohibit free speech even if that speech is abhorrent. It doesn’t make them any less assholish. Maybe a case can be made that these protests go over the line into some kind of illegal harrassment, but I think that might require something more than per se speech.
If Congress is going to attempt this kind of legislation, I wish they’d at least make it more encompassing than military funerals. I don’t see why the survivors of dead soldiers are entitled to more protection than the survivors of AIDS victims.
As I said, i can see an argument for extending this protection only to government-sponsored funerals.
Another argument might approach it on disturbing-the-peace grounds. As others have pointed out, I can’t protest in the middle of the night. I’m assuming also that if I went to a college graduation ceremony and started screaming obscenities at the students, they could escort me off campus without violating my free speech rights. By this argument, the law ought to cover all funerals.
Folks have said that moving his protest to a different location wouldn’t suffice, because it’d rob his protest of its meaning. Well, too bad. To the extent to which that is true, his prtoest’s meaning is that it robs the funeral of its meaning. If he’s allowed to rob their peaceful gathering of its meaning, why can the state not rob his peaceful gathering of its meaning?
That still sounds like the free speech zone idea. I thought we almost unanimously all disliked it when political protestors were put into free speech zones to ‘protect’ the President. Does that change to such great degree because a funeral is being protested?
This is a good point–and I should say that I’ve not changed from my initial position in this thread (which is that intellectually I’m unconvinced). I’m throwing out the best arguments I can think of in support of this proposal, not saying that I agree with them.
Two differences between free speech zones and these funeral things:
- Free speech zones are sometimes put up around campaign stops. That does not serve an essential government function; on the contrary, by stifling political debate during a campaign, it impairs an essential aspect of democracy.
- Free speech zones are often set up around non-campaign events that are nonetheless intended to discuss a political issue. If the President is stumping for his social security policy, and folks are prevented from protesting with an alternate view, that impairs democracy.
If a Free Speech Zone is put up when the President is doing something essentially apolitical (e.g., giving an award to a child who raised money for muscular distrophy or something), that’s much less problematic, I think, than either of the two previous examples.
Daniel
I keep seeing this pop up here and in other forums- “Why didn’t the Feds get involved to protect gay funerals?”
Thanks to the principle of federalism, the Feds don’t have the right to “protect” funerals that aren’t in National Cemetaries. Prohibiting protests at funerals elsewhere is rightly a state matter. Texas recently passed a law prohibiting protests at funerals. Is that better?