Last year, religious zealots flocked to the Youth Pride festival. They not only protested outside the event, but they entered the event. While inside the festival, among other disruptive measures, they taunted attendees with verbal slurs and shoved pamphlets with anti-gay scripture in their faces.

Their behavior was so disruptive that parents who accompanied a high school dance team had to form a human chain so that the dance team could enter the event.

At the time, I wrote here that the “protesters” had exceeded the bounds of First Amendment protected speech. Their behavior amounted to trespassing and – to the extent minors at the event felt harassed, intimidated or physically battered – it was child abuse.

I also pointed out the irony of all this. If protesters enter a church service and disrupt the service, police could arrest them for trespassing. That is because the Legislature provides church services with a so-called “bubble law.” This prohibits protesters from entering a church service or coming into direct contact with congregants.

That’s why I suggested that the Legislature include “youth events” as those that should be subject to the so called “bubble laws.”

But even without a bubble law, police can arrest those who seek to disrupt the associational and speech rights of attendees. Recently, fundamentalists protested an event in Philadelphia. In addition to taunting the attendees with religious dogma, they “handed” scripture to attendees. After police arrested them for trespass, battery and harassment, the protesters claimed that First Amendment “freedom of religion” protected their behavior.

But courts have held that freedom of religion doesn’t immunize parents who refuse medical treatment for their kids, or who beat their children in the name of the Lord, and it doesn’t give protesters license to harass, intimidate, or interfere with the rights of association of others.

The Youth Pride festival will take place again on May 14-15. Local religious fundamentalists have targeted the event for protest.

Because of their activities last year, the City Attorney should seek a restraining order to prevent their entry into the event. If they violate the order, or otherwise engage in the same activities they did last year, police should arrest them for trespass, battery, harassment and child abuse. Mike Aguirre and Bonnie Dumanis have to prosecute these crimes against kids.

House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s call for investigating and removing federal judges for “bad behavior” because they don’t espouse his religious dogma has finally put the scare into the federal judiciary, most of whom are Republicans. Federal judges are calling for increased security to protect them from Congress.

The reality is that Delay and the right know they don’t have the votes to pass amendments to the Constitution to ban abortion and sex outside of marriage. They can’t even pass an amendment banning same-sex marriage through Congress.

So that leaves the federal judiciary as their target. They want President Bush to nominate judges who will provide the rulings they want, regardless of whether the legal rationale has anything to do with precedent.

Even conservative justices like Antonin Scalia are not conservative enough anymore.

For example, Scalia and many conservative judges are members of the Federalist Society, a group that believes the federal government is limited in power and that the states have general authority over most matters.

But now that the Republicans have control over legislative and executive branches, the religious right and others want to federalize everything (e.g., regulation of guns, healthcare, tobacco). By doing so, it prevents or preempts states like California from having laws allowing medicinal use of marijuana, or assisted-suicide, or bathhouses, indecent material on the Internet and the like.

Because the Constitution grants Congress the sole power to regulate interstate commerce, the right wants to use that power to regulate conduct.

For example, the religious right doesn’t like “gay sex” or any sex “outside of marriage.” Could Congress make it a federal felony to engage in unprotected sex? Yes. Why? People who engage in unprotected sex may get diseases like AIDS. They can’t work, they can’t buy goods and they are a drain on the national economy. So unprotected sex affects interstate commerce and therefore Congress can regulate unprotected sex.

By passing such a law, that could allow the attorney general to close down bathhouses, Internet websites and other sexually-oriented business, all to the extent they allow, encourage or promote unprotected sex.

As crazy as such a scheme sounds, given the “right” federal judges, it could be declared completely constitutional.

Today, however, even conservatives like Scalia would strike down such a law because of its tenuous connection to interstate commerce. Justice Scalia has criticized federal civil rights laws because Congress passed such laws on the basis that denying people hotel rooms because of race affected interstate commerce.