ABQJOURNAL OPINION/GUEST_COLUMNS: Community Steps Up, Provides Funeral Buffer

Friday, March 11, 2011

Community Steps Up, Provides Funeral Buffer

By Robert Jordan
Rio Rancho resident
          I thought I would wait until Sunday and listen to the Westboro Baptist Church's lawyer, Margie Phelps, before taking up my pen. Her arguments for being allowed to desecrate a heretofore sacrosanct occasion, the burial of a fallen warrior, did not give me any newfound respect for the righteousness of their cause.
        Phelps impressed me as a sad outcast with a tenuous grasp of reality anchored in her cult's capacity to know the unknowable.
        That said, the Supreme Court found her case sufficiently compelling to overwhelmingly rule against Albert Snyder's claim of emotional distress.
        Who in our country supports the Westboro Baptist Church's tactic of inflicting additional pain on an already staggered family? Who stands with them to rant at a nine-year-old girl, seeing insanity personified through her tear-blurred eyes?
        The First Amendment requires the once-hopeful young widow to share one of the worst days of her life with a gang of mocking buffoons who would be voted off the planet in our pseudo-reality world.
        Like it or not, the Supreme Court justices do not live among us. They are academics removed from the gritty chaos the rest of us know as everyday existence. And maybe this is for the best.
        They have spoken, and now you must decide how to respond.
        I am 4 1/2 years removed from my own encounter with team Phelps. My oldest boy, Alex, was killed in Baghdad on Sept. 10, 2006. I was near blind with grief when the real America came to help me.
        The Army and National Guard were appropriately at our sides from that awful Sunday to this day.
        I had never heard of the Patriot Guard Riders before then. They were the literal and emotional cavalry. We had new friends, battle-tested old hands, familiar with loss and imbued with a dignity the little mob from Topeka will never know.
        The Rio Rancho Police Department received advance notice of intent to picket Alex's funeral and went right to work to do everything within the law to preserve public order and keep the jackals at bay.
        Complete strangers intervened to protect the flag and the dignity of the occasion.
        In short, my community stepped in to give family and friends a chance to bury one of our own in relative peace.
        The Funeral Protection Act of 2007 gives us a 500-foot buffer between a funeral site and any protests. There is precedent of communities being proactive in keeping protesters from free access to a funeral.
        Good people show up early to occupy the prime locations. They leave no room for out-of-town troublemakers to gain close access. When hundreds of decent people insinuate themselves between the protesters and the funeral, the muting effect provides the needed relief.
        The court does not provide guidance in a ruling. Their only job is to determine legality. It is for the people of a society to devise remedies for problems.
        The framers of our Constitution could not have imagined some of the assaults it would need to endure. It was written broadly to provide citizens protection from over-reaching government interference.
        The remedy for the hateful actions of these silly people is to overwhelm them with positive local support.
        Should the Westboro Baptist Church ever come to my town again, I will feel comfortable in my First Amendment right to place myself between them and any family deserving of the help our community is honor-bound to provide.

You also can send comments via our comment form