The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional for members of a church group to protest at military funerals this March. They come to the funerals with anti-gay, anti-military, anti-Catholic signs, and tell the families of the fallen how much their loved one was hated.

I would want my own funeral protested. I would want someone to come and speak. She was too young, they would say of me. She deserved to live to see children, grandchildren. She never got to see Japan or San Diego or have a husband or taste sake. There were so many books she never got to read, and paintings she never got to draw. She shouldn't have had to die like this.

Of course, if anyone does protest at my funeral, my father will likely beat them bloody, if my mother doesn't get to them first, her brittle nails clawing at them. My father told off the rabbi and the funeral home's director at my grandmother's--my mother's mother's--funeral, telling them both to leave his wife the FUCK alone so she could have a moment at the graveside to say goodbye. The rabbi looked at the funeral home director as though asking can he say that to me?

Or at least that's how my dad put it when he told me about the incident. I wasn't at my grandmother's funeral, freshly arrived at my third (forth) stage of military training, my Naval "C" school, where I learned how to solder.

If God hates soldiers, what must He think of me, the worse soldermonkey in the fleet, the one who takes over an hour just to cut copper stock for an end-of-conductor run? If God hates gays, what must He think of someone who finds the whole 'be fruitful and multiply' thing a daunting prospect. If God hates Catholics, what must He think of someone who finds the Sailor's Creed as close to a prayer as Our Father, raised Jewish and free-thinking?

So, protest at my funeral, if you feel the need. You have the right, and I won't be there.