Members of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) (www.godhatesfags.com), of Topeka, Kansas picket military funerals with hateful messages that terrorize the bereaved family- carrying signs asking to "pray for more dead soldiers".

As a radical hate group allegedly exercising first amendment privilege, they disrupt funerals with the intent to annoy or harass participants in a religious service.  This petition asks federal lawmakers to use criminal prosecution to stop these attacks.

WBC picketed the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006.  Corporal Snyder's father sued WBC and lost on appeal.

Criminal law (18 USC 67, s1388) expressly prohibits "disruptions of funerals of members or former members of the Armed Forces", so this should have never been a civil case leaving Mr. Snyder to shoulder the burdens belonging to the United States. Yet the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Mr. Snyder to pay $16,510 in court costs to Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of Snyder v. Phelps, while WBC continues in what is arguably a crime spree that obstructs persons in the free exercise of religious beliefs.