Military Funerals and Freedom of Speech

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That is the full text of the First Amendment, as anyone can see it on the Federal Archives Charters of Freedom website. I know it by heart, but looked it up for the benefit of any that may not have done the same – and to verify that I honestly comprehend what it means. Now, my ninth grade Civics teacher was very kind, and managed to beat into our adolescent skulls that while we were granted these rights by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that didn’t mean that we could run about willy-nilly and do whatever we pleased. He was very adamant and clear when he said (and made us parrot back to him many times over) that our rights were limited. Every citizen’s rights end where the rights of another citizen begin.

That said, I’m definitely beginning to wonder about the wisdom of at least a few people in this country that supposedly know at least a little about our laws – namely some judges and legal experts that get paraded on the various news networks. Silly thought keeps occurring to me – the rights of the military families to assemble, and exercise their rights to observe their particular religious faiths through burial ceremonies with the privacy and/or solemnity that their religions typically prescribe are definitely being impinged upon when a group decides to assemble nearby and scream obscenities at them. Now, I doubt that my ninth-grade Civics teacher lied to us all about those limits to rights, primarily because I regularly have seen references to that concept in many court rulings.

There is a time and place for everything, and bluntly, military funerals are not the time or place to protest homosexuality, or gays in the military. The rights of the families to observe their funeral rites in peace are no less important than the rights of protesters. Ironies abound in this situation, from the un-Christian-like behavior of the church members, to the fact that the people being buried died to protect the rights of the protesters. That alone is enough to make one ponder precisely why this organization is finding it necessary to mount these protests at all.

But motives are not the issue here. What is at issue is the fact that there is anyone out there seriously questioning the rights of military families in this situation. If these protests were being held anywhere but at these funerals, I would be defending them, albeit begrudgingly because I was raised to have deep respect for people that serve our country in the armed forces. The saddest part of the situation is that anyone needs to consider whether or not we should exercise our First Amendment rights and petition our lawmakers to pass a law that would specifically protect military funerals from protests. Let those that want to speak against dead military personnel’s choices in life do so in a more appropriate place – The Pentagon.