The rant of the day has been percolating for some time.
It started last week when I read this:
An anti-gay group from Topeka, Kan., announced plans to picket the funerals of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre.
The Westboro Baptist Church, which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, claims shooter Cho Seung-hui was carrying out God's wishes by punishing the victims who weren't Christian, CBS News reported.
"The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants," WBC member Shirley Phelps-Roper told CBS.
Phelps and his group are notorious for taking extreme positions in the name of God. They run a website (which I refuse to link to because it gets too damn much traffic anyway) in which they explain why Americans are generally all going to hell. While I'm not a religious person, I remember enough from my years of Sunday school as a child to know that the message of the bible is forgiveness.
Phelps protested the funerals of the Columbine victims - they got what they got because they were evil. They preached at the funeral of Matthew Sheppard because he was gay and as their literature states unequivocally: God Hates fags. Perhaps it should read: God doesn't appreciate those who use his name to promote their own narrow, bigoted, and evil message.
Later in the week it looked as if sanity would rule the day. I read that the group had cancelled their plans to protest (as they did earlier this year after they had announced plans to protest at the funeral;s for the 5 Amish girls who were slain in Pennsylvania). Why did they cancel the planned protests? Because a TV commentator agreed to give them air time and let them take their message to the airwaves! GRRR
I agree passionately about freedom of speech but this tripe is just too darn much!
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