Senator wants to criminalize protests at military funerals

INDIANAPOLIS -- A state senator angered by a recent protest at an Indiana soldier's funeral wants to make disorderly conduct a felony offense if it occurs at military funerals.\nSen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, said he would propose legislation in response to an anti-gay group's protest at the Aug. 28 funeral for Army Staff Sgt. Jeremy Doyle, an Indianapolis native killed in Iraq.\nSix members of the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church dragged U.S. flags on the ground and shouted insults at Doyle's surviving family members outside a mortuary in Martinsville, about 30 miles southwest of Indianapolis.\n"No family should have to go through this at a funeral," Steele said.\nThe Rev. Fred Phelps, the church's founder, contends American soldiers are being killed in Iraq as vengeance from God for protecting a country that harbors gays. The church, which is not affiliated with a larger denomination, is made up mostly of Phelps' children, grandchildren and in-laws.\nPhelps and his followers, who engage in anti-homosexual picketing around the country, have targeted military funerals in recent months, including one in early August in Portage in northern Indiana.\nSome of the group's statements amount to fighting words, according to a letter the Heltonville Area Veterans sent Steele.\n"We feel any funeral, especially those of veterans killed in the service of our country, deserves the protection of law," said the letter, which 20 people signed.\nSteele said he would file a bill seeking to make disorderly conduct a felony punishable by a three-year prison sentence and $10,000 fine if committed during military funerals, be it at the funeral home, during the procession or at the grave site.\nDisorderly conduct already is a felony in Indiana if committed at airports or their parking lots, and Steele said the funerals of fallen soldiers deserve the same sanctity.\nAn Oklahoma lawmaker also plans to file legislation in response to a Westboro protest at a military funeral in his state in July.\nThat bill would make it unlawful for anyone to engage in any form of protest within 500 feet of any funeral at a home, mortuary, cemetery, church or other place of worship. The bill also would bar protests within two hours before or after a funeral, and the penalty would be a mandatory 30-day jail term.\nIn 1995, a federal judge threw out a Kansas law that prohibited picketing outside funerals, saying it was too vague. State legislators later enacted a new law that spelled out the time period when such picketing is barred.\nWestboro members said they would fight the moves in court.\n"You can't turn off First Amendment rights into disorderly conduct of any kind," said Shirley Phelps-Roeper, Pastor Phelps' daughter.\nKen Falk, the Indiana Civil Liberties Union's legal director, said he was not aware of any cases dealing with the constitutionality of funeral protests.\nRepublican state Rep. Paul Wesselhoft of Oklahoma, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, said he has conducted many military funerals.\n"I'm just not going to put up with that in my state," said Wesselhoft, who plans to introduce the Oklahoma bill. "They victimize a family when a family is at its most vulnerable state"