To the editor:

This letter is in reference to the Leonard Pitts Jr. column published in the June 6 Journal-World, “Dancing spurs legal overreaction.”

In 2008, Mary Brook Oberwetter and some friends were arrested for doing a silent interpretative dance at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Oberwetter sued. “Last month,” Pitts wrote, “a federal court dismissed the case, ruling the government is not required to allow ‘the full range of free expression’ in a space built for ‘a solemn commemorative purpose.'”

What is more solemn commemorative space than a combat soldier’s gravesite? Yet the Supreme Court ruled that Fred Phelps and his brood of hagglers can demonstrate in a manner they choose. Can Fred and family do in Washington, D.C, at the National Cemetery as they do in small town U.S.A.?