The Westboro Baptist Church — the headline-grabbing group whose anti-gay protests at military funerals have drawn widespread condemnation — has never set foot in Fairfax County. But that doesn’t mean county officials want to make it any easier for them to visit. The county Board of Supervisors is calling for the state legislature to allow communities to tighten their restrictions on funeral protests. If the agenda is approved, the board will discuss its proposal with state lawmakers in early December.
It’s already a Class 1 misdemeanor to disrupt a funeral in Virginia. But current legislation doesn’t specify how close protestors can be to a funeral, the manner in which they can protest or the times they are allowed to do so. Fairfax’s proposal would let communities set specific time, location and manner restrictions, said Lee Supervisor Jeff McKay, the chairman of the board’s Legislative Committee.
McKay’s quick to say he doesn’t want to stifle free speech or even ban funeral protests entirely. But a rash of protests at military funerals across the country in recent years convinced him that setting guidelines for those protests is necessary, he said.
“We want to be proactive and be prepared, should something like that happen here,” he said. “It’s particularly important in an area where you have high populations of military personnel.”
In its 2011 decision on Snyder v. Phelps, in which a family had sued Westboro over a military funeral protest, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the protest was protected under the First Amendment. But several states, including Arizona and Illinois, have laws on the books restricting funeral protests. And at Arlington National Cemetery, protests inside the cemetery’s gates are banned entirely, thanks to a federal statute.
Still, the protesters are allowed to gather off-property, provided they obtain a permit. Last Memorial Day, Westboro Baptist Church members protested outside the Arlington National Cemetery Metro stop, while members of the Ku Klux Klan staged a counterprotest across the street.
“It was during one of the busiest times of the year for us,” said cemetery Public Affairs Officer Jennifer Lynch. “But it didn’t affect us, it didn’t affect our operations.”
