BOISE -- State Rep. Henry Kulczyk was among the 13 people arrested Monday for allegedly refusing to leave a closed area of a city park where work crews were removing a controversial Ten Commandments monument.
Police Tuesday released the names of the 13 cited in Julia Davis Park Monday afternoon after they allegedly refused to leave as the monument was moved. They were among about 100 people protesting moving the granite edifice to St. Michael Episcopal Cathedral.
Also arrested were Brandi Swindell, spokeswoman of the Keep the Commandments Coalition, and former congressional and legislative candidate Dennis Mansfield.
Swindell did not return a telephone message left by the Associated Press Tuesday evening. Mansfield also could not be reached.
Kulczyk, one of the most conservative Republicans in the House, said that before the legislative session ended, there were a half-dozen House members and three senators who were willing to protest the monument's removal.
As lawmakers, they would have been exempt from arrest of a misdemeanor while the Legislature was in session.
"That's why the city decided to wait until after the session was over," Kulczyk said.
But some of Kulczyk's political peers -- both Republicans and Democrats -- said that as someone elected to make laws, he should not have taken his protest so far as to get himself arrested.
House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, who leads the Republican House caucus, said Tuesday that laws ought to be respected by the people who make them.
"I think its a matter of, you have to weigh what your principle is," Newcomb said in a telephone interview. "When you're a lawmaker, you're definitely held to obeying the law. I think there might have been a different way to make a peaceful protest," Newcomb said.
Kulczyk said his action was one of civil disobedience.
"There are things more important that the letter of the law," Kulczyk said. "I think that there comes a time when there are things more important than the letter of the law. There are principles that are important enough to stand for."
The 13 protesters arrested were cited for allegedly violating a misdemeanor city parks closure ordinance that carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $300 fine.
Kulczyk said he was not sure yet whether he would plead innocent or guilty.
The controversy surrounding the 1 1/2-ton monument to the Ten Commandments began last year, when Kansas preacher Fred Phelps demanded space to erect an anti-gay monument in the park. He cited a court ruling in another case that held that if a city allows one religious monument on public property, it must allow monuments expressing other beliefs.
The city opted to move the Ten Commandments to private property. The Keep the Commandments Coalition unsuccessfully sought a court order barring the move.
