Cuccinelli Gets it Right on Rights of Protestors
By Kent Willis, Executive Director
Shortly after Ken Cuccinelli was elected as Virginia’s Attorney General last fall, I received a call from a reporter asking us to predict what kind of AG he would be. I expressed both apprehension and optimism. Given Cuccinelli’s poor legislative record on civil liberties and his ideologically-driven campaign promises, the reporter fully expected me to offer the former but expressed surprise at the latter.
I explained that a close look at Cuccinelli’s past showed him to have a mavericky libertarian streak that could serve him well as AG. For example, despite being a proponent of capital punishment, he at one point voted against a bill to expand the death penalty on grounds that it could lead to unfair prosecutions. On another occasion, he led the charge to prevent DMV from collecting biological data or financial information from applicants for drivers’ licenses because it was an unnecessary invasion of privacy.
Several months into Cuccinelli’s term, I wondered if we had been wrong. By that time Cuccinelli had become something of a national joke. Early in his tenure, he ordered officials at state colleges to rescind all policies protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. We immediately sent a letter to every college president saying we’d sue if any of them began to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Cuccinelli was so wrong about this that he forced the Governor to clean up the mess by issuing an “executive directive” protecting gay and lesbian government employees from discrimination.
Then, just a few weeks ago, Cuccinelli launched an investigation into a former UVA professor and global warming expert by demanding to see all his records, including private communications. Cuccinelli, who has implied that he does not support global warming theories, seemed to be on a witch hunt to undermine the scientist simply because he disagreed with his conclusions. This very real threat to academic freedom and scientific inquiry prompted us and the American Association of University Professors to urge UVA to fight the sweeping demand for the professor’s records. UVA has since decided to do exactly that, and the matter is headed to court.
So yesterday, when we heard that 48 state AGs had filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to rule that Rev. Fred Phelps and his deplorable Westboro Baptist Church congregation did not have a right to protest at military funerals, I expected Cuccinelli to be among them. After all, 48 AGs is a lot muscle, and they represent the full spectrum of U.S politics — Democrats, Republicans, left, right and everything in-between.
Phelps, using reasoning so twisted it’s hard to explain, organizes demonstrations at funerals of fallen soldiers to protest the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality, claiming that the killing of American soldiers is God’s vengeance for our sexually immoral ways. Phelps is not allowed to disrupt funeral proceedings, but the First Amendment should protect his right to stand on nearby sidewalks with signs such as the one referring to the U.S as a nation of “sodomite hypocrites.”
That’s what the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, and I suspect we’ll see the same from the Supreme Court.
Everyone’s sympathies lie with the families of the soldiers, who want this moment of solemn closure to be focused on the young men and women who gave their lives for their country, not the protestors nearby. We all think Phelps is vile and just want him to go away.
This is the mavericky libertarian Cuccinelli we’ve been looking for all these months. The maverick in him kept him from bowing to pressure from practically every other AG in the nation, and the libertarian in him opposed giving the government the power to censor political speech, even if he, like everyone else, strongly disagreed with its content.
