Families’ ability to mourn and remember, to honor and celebrate lost lives is being crippled by the Governor’s arbitrary rules on funerals.
Funerals of more than 30 attendees, regardless of where they are held, inside or out, are prohibited.
You can assemble hundreds of people outdoors to rage and rant, but in the same space Inslee won’t let nearly as many people gather if their purpose is to mourn and remember.
Effective September 16, 2020, the Governor allowed funerals to resume. He now allows indoor and outdoor funeral services but attendance must not exceed 30 people or 25% of maximum building capacity, whichever is less.
Inslee had previously prohibited all funerals. Unlike buying pot–which was never restricted– he had declared that mourning death and celebrating life was a non-essential activity. You could hire gravediggers to slip the wife of fifty years marriage into the ground, but you and your family could not be there to weep. In cold, indifferent words Inslee restricted cemetery services to “delivery only.”
Even the spreading of ashes with others around was illegal for the past six months.
Inslee has graciously allowed us to begin to mourn our dead again in public. But like other exercises of what has become dictatorial power, this is another example of Inslee’s arbitrariness and irrational decrees.
Churches may hold indoor worship services of up to 50 people. But if the service is instead a funeral they must turn away everyone at the door starting with number 31.
Even if the funeral service is held outside in a huge open field with social distancing observed, Inslee’s order still limits the mourners to 30 in number.
If the church building is small and holds only eighty people, the maximum number of mourners for an outdoor service on church property would be less than the thirty that would be permitted if their building were larger. They are restricted to the lower number because Inslee’s order imposes a cap of 30 people or 25% of a building’s capacity, whichever is less.
Governor Inslee has had gatherings larger than that for his own media events.
Thousands of maskless people have gathered for protests in front of the Governor’s mansion. Throngs have spread on the lawn and steps around the State Capitol for hours and hours. That was okay.
Everyday you can find a lot more than 30 people in the aisles and lines at Costco, and that’s okay, too.
But more than 30 people gathered for an hour when their purpose is mourning, prayer and expressions of love is prohibited. The COVID virus doesn’t distinguish between people’s intentions or the content of their speech. Jay Inslee does.
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our “About” page for more information.
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