Church members say they will carry out planned protest

'Robbie knows ... that God is not punishing our country,' the fallen soldier's mother said.
STAFF/WIRE REPORTS
COLUMBUS -- Members of a Kansas church that pickets the funerals of dead soldiers say they will continue with plans for a protest Monday in Trumbull County despite a decision by a federal court upholding the state's law limiting where they may stand.
The mother of the targeted soldier, Army Sgt. Robert Carr, was unfazed.
"He's getting his hero's welcome home. We're going to bury him in a hero's way," Christine Wortman of Champion said Saturday. "It's Robbie's day, not theirs."
Carr's funeral will be at 11 a.m. Monday in Believers Christian Fellowship Church, 2577 Schenley Ave. N.E. off Elm Road Northeast in Warren. Burial will be with full military honors at Dugan Cemetery on Sodom-Hutchings Road, Fowler, immediately after the funeral.
Friends may call from 4 to 8 p.m. today in the church.
The Patriot Guard, a national organization of motorcycle enthusiasts who attend military funerals and honor returning veterans, will provide a buffer between the Carr family and any protesters who show up at services Sunday and Monday, said Atty. Ed Romero of Boardman, local spokesman for the group.
Last December, the Kansas church group had announced plans to protest at a soldier's funeral in Warren, raising the ire of local veterans groups intent on honoring him -- but nothing happened.
Army Sgt. Marco Miller, 36, combat cameraman, died Dec. 5 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Frankfurt, Germany, after being wounded in Iraq, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery after a service at Grace AME Church, 1137 Main Ave. S.W. Miller, a Warren native, was riding in a humvee with eight other soldiers when a bomb hit the vehicle. A member of the Army Reserve, the Orlando, Fla., resident had been in Iraq since September.
Court ruling
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Nugent in Cleveland upheld a state law that prohibits protesters from being within 300 feet of a cemetery, funeral home, or place of worship either one hour before or after a burial service.
However, Nugent struck down a portion of the 2006 law that extended the 300-foot buffer zone along funeral procession routes, saying it was unconstitutionally broad.
At least 27 states have enacted laws restricting funeral picketing, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The laws are aimed at Westboro Baptist Church, a small fundamentalist congregation in Topeka, Kan., whose members picket burials of U.S. troops killed in combat, arguing that the deaths are God's punishment for homosexuals.
The Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued along with a church member, saying the state cannot pass a law restricting freedom of speech.
The church had sued on principle, but most of its protests are outside the buffer zone anyway because they want to be near heavy traffic to get their message to the most people, she said. The ruling won't change anything about Monday's planned protest in Warren by about seven members, she said.
About Carr
Carr, 22, whose wife, Nina, lives with her husband's father and stepmother, Jeffrey and Cathy Carr, in Fowler, was killed March 13 when a bomb exploded beneath the armored vehicle he was driving. Carr's mother and stepfather, Christine and Bill Wortman Sr., live in Champion. Carr is a 2002 graduate of Champion High School.
"The military has assured us they will not get close to us," Christine Wortman said. "I don't care where they go. I don't believe anybody will be looking.
"Robbie knows, and every soldier out there, that God is not punishing our country."
Carr was expected home on leave to celebrate his April 10 wedding anniversary with his wife, and the pair planned a big family wedding to renew the vows in their civil ceremony, Wortman said.
The Patriot Guard, which started with motorcycle enthusiasts in Kansas who would gun their engines to drown out the protesters' chants, has grown to 85,000 members nationwide, with and without bikes, Romero said.
"We don't confront, we don't discuss," he said. "We don't actually acknowledge that they're even there."
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