Protection Needed For Families of Fallen Heroes

Like all Americans, reading through the newspaper has become a heart wrenching experience for me, when faced with the almost daily reports of the latest casualties suffered by our soldiers serving in Iraq and throughout the world. While the loss of any member of the armed forces causes us all great sadness, I’m always particularly saddened to see the ages of those who have fallen in service of our country.

It seems that so many of those who are giving their lives are of an age when the average citizen is just starting college, or a family, or embarking on their first careers with most of their lives and dreams still ahead of them.

In 2003, someone close to me lost her brother in Iraq. I had never met him, since he had been deployed to Iraq for some time from his home base in Colorado Springs. His family was immensely proud of him. At the age of 28, he had just earned his company command as a Captain serving with the infantry, and was killed soon after.

When we arrived at Fort Carson in Colorado for his funeral, I was struck by how many homes in that military town were adorned with banners and ribbons in support of their loved ones serving overseas – each hoping that their brothers, sisters, parents or spouses would return home safely.

The memory of his boots standing near the altar next to a bayonet standing on its end is one that I will never forget. Just as powerful was the long line of his fellow soldiers who had assembled in their dress uniforms to say goodbye to their comrade, along with their own families.

I remember asking an even younger soldier who accompanied us how hard it must be to say goodbye to someone with whom he had served, and his answer surprised me. With a very professional and cool demeanor, masking what must have been great sorrow, he said that he had already been through this experience five times in the preceding months. I wondered how he and others could maintain their composure, when the whole experience led me to stare down at the floor in an effort to maintain my own.

When an Army National Guard Sergeant and former Marine named Jessie Davila was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber this past month, his family gathered to honor him at a funeral service in Dodge City, Kansas. But Sergeant Davila’s funeral was not attended by just his grieving relatives and military family. It was also attended by a small and disgraceful group from Topeka, Kansas, intent on heckling Sergeant Davila’s family and dishonoring his memory.

In a disturbing campaign that has targeted the funerals of military heroes across the United States, this group carried signs printed with phrases like, “Thank God for IEDs” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” in a shameful effort to get press attention by creating even greater pain for the families of fallen soldiers.

This week, Kentucky became the fifth state to enact laws protecting funerals from this type of hate-filled activity. New Jersey should be the sixth, before the families of any of our soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice are faced with similar situations. Several legislators from both parties have proposed these measures in the Garden State, and they should advance as soon as possible to get these protections in place.

There are those who will claim that the U.S. Constitution’s protection of free speech protects even these kinds of “protests.” This is true to a degree since the First Amendment precludes bans on protests, whether based on the specific content of the message, or in a “content neutral” fashion that bans all protests in a specific area.

For this reason, ignorant and hate-filled groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis are allowed to march our streets, no matter how distasteful their activities might be.

But the Supreme Court has determined, for instance, that bans on protests at people’s homes pass the constitutional test due to the importance of residential privacy. I would argue that bans on funeral protests are certainly of equal importance to protect the privacy of grieving families, so long as they are narrowly tailored in terms of the time and distance provisions of the ban.

While some will prefer to debate this issue nonetheless, this is not the time to let them postpone efforts to bring this law into effect – this is the time for action.

There is no way our country can ever adequately repay the sacrifices made by our fallen soldiers and their families. We can and must, however, take strong steps to protect their families, to honor their service, and to stand with them when confronted with those wishing to dishonor their memories.