Good God

This has to be one of the most disgusting displays of any sort to take place in the world today. Fred Phelps and other members of the Westboro Baptist Church (which consists almost solely of his spawn and other low-lifes who are just sick enough to marry into this dysfunctional clan; I refuse to link to his website) have started to demonstrate at the funerals of soldiers who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. His reasoning? You see, God doesn’t like the USA because we tolerate homosexuals. Therefore, God is taking out these soldiers, overseas. One and two at a time.

This man is a liar. He’s demonstrating at these funerals because he’s an attention-whore. Plain and simple. Fortunately, he’s been such a loose cannon for so long that he’s created his own brand of counter-demonstrators. A group of bikers called the Patriot Guard Riders will, at the family’s request, show up at the funeral location and place themselves between the family and the demonstrators in an effort to drown out Phelps and his hatemongers. Their motorcycles don’t exactly let the family mourn “in peace,” but they at least reduce the chances that a soldier’s mother will hear taunts like “You sent your own child to hell” on the day she’s trying to bury her son.

Truly disgusting, disturbed people. As someone told me years ago, “If that’s the word of God, it’s sure changed since I was in Sunday School.”

I wrote just a couple of days ago about freedom of speech in this country and how it’s under fire from outside sources. It seems that Minnesota (the site of the latest funeral demonstration) is considering legislation to make funeral protests like this one illegal. As much as I’d like to see the whole Phelps clan spontaneously combust, I think that’s a bad idea. Yes, his speech is incredibly tasteless and very unpopular. But the First Amendment was intended specifically for such garbage; after all, popular speech doesn’t need to be protected. I’d much rather the government either used existing laws to remove these cretins (inciting a riot, perhaps?) or remained neutral and allowed people like the Patriot Guard Riders to offer the help that they can.

Besides, if the government starts limiting what Phelps can say and where, then people like me might not be able to ask questions like what happened to Debbie Valgos?