I don’t think I ever realized how truly cruel human beings can be until I saw the Westboro Baptist Church on the news in recent weeks. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this group, let me fill you in. Their most recent escapade is protesting the funerals of fallen soldiers, tormenting families with ghastly messages such as, “God hates dead soldiers” and “Thank God for IED’s,” (improvised explosive devices).
They claim that because America is tolerant of homosexuality God is sending us a message through dead soldiers. In fact they blame just about every tragedy, including Hurricane Katrina, on our nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. Come on.
Put yourself into the shoes of the family members of these soldiers! Can you imagine the pain and anguish that they must have felt? How could these people ever feel that they had any right to afflict this kind of heartache on people who are already grieving so much?
After watching an interview with Shirley Roper (one of the church’s psychotic members), I decided to do some research to find out why these people are so out of their minds. I’d like to share what I found. The more people that hate these people the better, in my mind.
First of all, I’d like to mention that the Westboro Baptist Church is in no way affiliated with any other Baptist church. The Baptist community has nothing to do with their actions and does not recognize them as an official church; in fact they oppose it just as much as the rest of the nation. I also found out that the church is actually a ten-house compound, with one lead house, where “services” are held and in which the founder and minister, Fred Phelps also resides.
The church is constantly planning protests, most of which take place at funerals of soldiers, Union Ceremonies, and, of course, the funerals of homosexuals. In fact, this isn’t the first time the Westboro Baptist Church has gotten this much publicity. Remember Matthew Shepard? Shepard was killed in a violent hate crime because of his sexual orientation. Westboro Baptist Church members were seen protesting his funeral with signs that read, “God Hates Fags.” Phelps even went as far as to tell Shepard’s mother that she would join Matthew and burn in Hell for supporting her son during the memorial service. The church also keeps a virtual counter of the number of days Shepard has “been in Hell.”
It’s awful what these people are capable of! My heart cries out to anyone who has ever had to deal with them in real life. I can’t imagine the rage that would run through me, were I ever to be face to face with a member of this organization.
I first found out about these poor excuses for human beings from a bulletin posted on myspace.com. The bulletin was posted by a childhood friend of mine who lost her brother nine months ago to the War in Iraq.
As I watched the interview that was posted, I cried my eyes out, thinking about his funeral, trying to imagine it being invaded by these cockroaches. I remember having faith in the human race that day, seeing all the respect that this man was receiving, people standing on the side of I-75, hands over their hearts, tears in their eyes. Time was stopped for that drive. It was a time I will never forget.
To think that some men’s memorial services have been tainted by such evil breaks my heart. Those families didn’t get to see that respect; they didn’t get to lay their children to rest in a proper way.
Aside from the pain that they are inflicting on innocent grieving families, this sickening group is also disgracing the gay community. How could they ever judge people the way they do? They have no right! It is no one’s fault that tragedies happen, and open-mindedness is a wonderful thing. Many people are able to live happy normal lives because of our nation’s tolerance.
I can only pray that our nation opens its eyes wider in years to come. To me everyone has the right to be with whomever they want; gender should not be a boundary.
I wish that I could do more than rant about my feelings in The Activist, but there isn’t much else to do. The church is hated by hundreds of organizations around the country, even the world, and yet they somehow remain unstoppable.
Phelps is everything evil in the world trapped in one miserable man. We can only hope that someday he gets a real wake up call. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem likely. Thanks for listening. I’m open to any comments! Harperel@email.uc.edu.