Warren Mayor Jim Fouts won unanimous City Council approval yesterday for a new ordinance that prohibits anyone within 550 feet of a funeral from doing anything that might incite or breach the peace of mourners.
In other words, Warren is trying to keep Fred Phelps and his rabidly homophobic funeral-protesting Westboro Baptist Church out of their quiet concrete town.
That seems understandable enough. Although, Michigan already has a law against disturbing funerals and these local anti-funeral ordinances tend to be challenged on Constitutional grounds, so why the sudden concern about a handful of publicity-whore bigots who aren’t currently planning a Warren visit?
One answer, suggested in the Macomb Daily, may be money.
Council President Cecil St. Pierre Jr. sees a financial plus in having cases adjudicated in 37th District Court.
“If we do it under our ordinance, the court gets to keep the cost, rather than the money being shipped to the state,” said St. Pierre Jr., who works as an attorney.
Geez, Warren, are you suddenly too good for speed traps? Restricting speech (however odious) to thwart an imaginary threat doesn’t seem like a great way to raise revenue.
Image by Paul M. Walsh, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
