Talk about earning extra credit.

One minute, Zach Parker was working on a project for his senior history class at Searsport District High School. Then next, he was climbing into a Lincoln town car for the long ride to Boston and a coast-to-coast interview with the Fox News Channel.

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Zach Parker, Searsport District High School: “There will come that day, on Judgment Day, that they will be judged for their actions.”

“My world has been tipped upside down lately,” said Parker, 17.

It’s easy to root for this kid — and many Mainers are — as he proposes a federal law that would ban the notorious Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., from using military funerals as the stage for the tiny congregation’s protests against all things homosexual.

Led by the wild-eyed Pastor Fred Phelps, the church has spent more than a decade claiming everything from hurricanes and tornadoes to, yes, the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are God’s way of punishing this country for its tolerance of homosexuality.

In other words, Phelps and his brood — most of the 70 or so church members are related — give new meaning to the phrase “mixed nuts.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with them!” said Parker in a telephone interview Thursday as he packed for his chauffeured, overnight trip to Boston, courtesy of the national program “Fox & Friends.” “I think they’re beyond all outreach — I’m going to tell you that right now.”

Parker’s unlikely journey began just after Thanksgiving, when he and his classmates were assigned to research a political or social issue and then act upon it.

A few Google searches later, Parker found himself staring in disbelief at the widely documented exploits of the Westboro Baptist Church, whose members traverse the nation (including a 2007 visit to Maine) to hold up signs like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” as grieving families go about burying their war dead.

“I cannot say they’re going to hell,” said Parker, a devout Baptist who attends the Little River Community Church in Belfast. “But there will come that day, on Judgment Day, that they will be judged for their actions. God will judge them — and it may be a harsh judgment.”

In the meantime, Parker, whose uncle may be deployed with the National Guard next year, just wants Congress to outlaw protests at all military funerals and burial services. And, in the process, throw a monkey wrench into the Phelpses’ anything-but-Christian road show.

Bless the young lad for trying, but it won’t be easy.

The good news, Parker quickly found, is that Maine and at least 39 other states already have outlawed protests at or near funerals if, as Maine’s statute puts it, the demonstrators’ behavior has “direct tendency to cause a violent response by an ordinary person in mourning and in attendance.”

What’s more, the federal Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act, passed by Congress in 2006, already bans protests within 300 feet of any cemetery controlled by the National Cemetery Administration for 60 minutes before and after any funeral.

But overshadowing all these laws is Snyder v. Phelps, a case now under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the father of fallen Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder of Maryland sued Fred Phelps for infliction of emotional distress as Snyder’s family laid him to rest in 2006.

A decision on that closely watched case is expected sometime between now and June. And many groups, including civil libertarians and news organizations, have urged the Supreme Court to look beyond the emotion enveloping the case and uphold Phelps’ right to free speech — however vile that speech may be.

Parker’s take: Phelps’ free-speech rights should be trumped by a grieving family’s First Amendment right to peaceful assembly.

“Yes, people do have the right to free speech,” he said. “But when it starts infringing on somebody else’s right, such as the right to gather peacefully, and when the words that they’re spreading are harassment and hate speech, that’s a First Amendment violation as far as I’m concerned.”

Interesting argument. In fact, it’s one of the issues currently being considered by the Supreme Court.

“I can’t do much (legislation-wise) until the Supreme Court rules on Snyder v. Phelps,” Parker said. “But I can put a dent in what the Westboro church is doing and possibly have an effect on the Supreme Court if the justices get hold of this news.”

What Parker already has done is put himself squarely in the crosshairs of the crackpots from Kansas.

Since news of Parker’s project first broke a week ago, he’s been deluged by e-mails from Shirley Phelps-Roper, Fred Phelps’ daughter. If Parker goes ahead with his plans to hold a public seminar on his proposal at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday at Searsport District High School, Phelps-Roper warns, members of the Westboro Baptist Church will be there to (what else?) protest.

“You must be living in a painful Spiderman movie if you think that you can change or stop God from killing soldiers,” Phelps-Roper wrote in one e-mail to Parker. “Or stop his people from standing on a PUBLIC right of way to help you connect the dots from that wrath of God, fury really that killed and sent to hell your disobedient rebel soldier to your filthy manner of life!”

Uh-huh. Earplugs, anyone?

Parker, who’s already received the highest grade possible on his project, knows the Westboro Baptist Church often fails to make good on its demonstration threats. Still, as the national news media take note of Parker, so undoubtedly has the Phelps clan taken note of the media coverage.

“I have to expect that they’re going to be there,” said Parker.

And if they are?

“I’m just going to go ahead and ignore them as much as possible.”

Smart kid.

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at:

bnemitz@mainetoday.com

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