The Harley Honor Guard

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

An all too familiar dirge emanated from the bagpipes at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, Calif., last week as the coffin of Army Sergeant Joseph Blanco, who died under enemy fire in Taji, Iraq, was borne past two rows of mourners holding American flags. Blanco's pallbearers wore neatly pressed military greens. But the onlookers were hardly regulation: outfitted in leather jackets, do-rags and multiple tattoos, with nicknames like Fugdaboutit and Fat Bob, wearing patches with legends like HEAVILY MEDICATED FOR YOUR PROTECTION, they had roared in earlier by the dozens on Harleys, Hondas and more Harleys, from as near as Palm Springs, Calif., and as far as Phoenix, Ariz., to take their places as honored guests of the bereaved--and as part of an eccentric but eloquent expression of national grief over sons and daughters who gave their lives in war.

They call themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, and in a culture in which a 24-hour news cycle and habitual political spin can make the most earnest public gesture seem tired or canned, they appear to be the real thing: a spontaneous mass movement. They formed as a response to the Rev. Fred Phelps, an attention-crazed fanatic based in Topeka, Kans., who has logged 15 years as a kind of paleo-fundamentalist, gay-baiting performance artist. Last spring Phelps grabbed the already troubling line, taken by preachers such as Pat Robertson, that disasters like 9/11 were God's punishment for American sins, and spun it past the boundary of the outrageous by having his followers crash military funerals with signs like GOD LOVES IEDS (improvised explosive devices) and scream to grieving parents that their children were in hell as divine punishment for what Phelps calls the nation's "enabling" and "harboring" of homosexuals.

After more than a dozen such episodes, five American Legion Riders from Kansas decided last August that they had had enough. At subsequent funerals, they gathered fellow bikers to form a human shield between Phelps' disciples and the bereaved, blocking the protesters' signs with flags and occasionally revving their engines to drown out the insults. Soon the riders outgrew the protesters. Phelps' church has only about 75 members, mostly his relatives. But the newly named Patriot Guard expanded exponentially and today claims 28,000 bikers and supporters. They attend every single military funeral for which the family gives permission. "We joined because of Fred Phelps, but now the whole focus is off Fred Phelps," says California state coordinator Cheryl Egan. "It's more about the troop who just gave his or her life."

And about a unique coalescing of needs and remedies. Some of the riders are grizzled Vietnam vets looking for closure. "They didn't get thanked for their service," says Gus Quist, the leader of the group at Captain Ian Weikel's funeral in Colorado Springs, Colo., last week, "and we want to say thank you to this next generation." Others are hobbyists a generation younger and simply happy to pay respects. The group is strictly culture-war neutral. Notes Patriot Guard California state ride captain David (Scooter) Bolton: "Nobody cares if [a rider is] gay or not. It's not a meet-and-greet-and-date organization. It's to honor fallen heroes."

In addition to the Guard, Phelps' antics provoked anti-funeral-demonstration legislation, passed in nine states and proposed in more than 12 others and in Congress. Most of the laws establish a protest-free buffer of several hundred feet around memorial services. Civil libertarians say such statutes are vulnerable to challenge, especially since a Supreme Court decision in 2000 allotted only an 8-ft. buffer around anyone entering protested abortion clinics. David Hudson of Washington's First Amendment Center argues that the bikers' vroom trumps clearing room. Paraphrasing former Justice Louis Brandeis, Hudson says, "The remedy is more speech, not enforced silence."

David Weikel is certainly thankful that the Patriot Guard spoke up. He was warned that Phelps' supporters might show up at his son Ian's funeral in Colorado Springs. "What a hateful group of people," says Weikel, a former pastor. In the end, Phelps' people were absent, but the bikers showed up. "I love them deeply," Weikel says, adding a sentiment not often applied to the hog-and-leathers set: "I appreciate their ministry in my life."

With reporting by Reported by Brian Bennett/Washington, Rita Healy/Colorado Springs, Matt Kettmann/Riverside