 A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said he's coming to Idaho on Wednesday to picket the memorial for an Idaho National Guard soldier killed in Iraq. A flier on the Web site of Pastor Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church claims God killed Cpl. Carrie French with an improvised explosive device in retaliation against the United States for a bombing at Phelps' church six years ago.
| Sounds like Preacher Phelps is suffering from delusions of significance... |
"We're coming," Phelps said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Westboro Baptist either has protested or is planning protests of other public funerals of soldiers from Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Virginia and Colorado. A protest is planned for July 11 at Dover Air Force Base, the military base where war dead are transported before being sent on to their home states. Phelps gained national notoriety in 1998 when he picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student beaten to death in Wyoming.
| What's that have to do with the military? |
Since then, Phelps said his church has been the target of hateful words and actions, including a bomb attack six years ago. Phelps' church has picketed the funerals of AIDS victims for more than a decade.
| He and his parishioners sound like a bunch of ignorant sods... |
French, 19, was a Caldwell High School graduate and varsity cheerleader. She was killed June 5 in the northern city of Kirkuk. French served as an ammunition specialist with the 116th Brigade Combat Team's 145th Support Battalion. Phelps said the fact that French led an all-American life gives him all the more reason to picket her final public tribute.
| That makes sense. Not a lot of sense, but sense. Of a sort... I guess. |
"An all-American girl from a society of all-American heretics," he said.
| Heretics? He into autos-da-fe? |
"Our attitude toward what's happening with the war is the Lord is punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that are worth a dime," Phelps said.
| I'm not too enthused about some of the extremes various freedumbs are being taken to, either, but calling people heretics and disrespecting our war dead would seem to be a pretty roundabout way of fixing the problem. |
Caldwell Police Chief Bob Sobba said he cannot bar Phelps from going to the public funeral, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Albertson College of Idaho in that city. "While we respect Mr. Phelps' right to protest, we would hope that he drops dead on the spot and rots in hell for all eternity would respect the family and friends of this young person by not disrupting the memorial," Sobba said. Idaho Air National Guard Lt. Tony Vincelli, acting as spokesman for French's family, said there were no plans to change the funeral arrangements.
| They'd probably just follow wherever it went. They're obviously lacking in taste, tact, and patriotism of any sort... |
The Rev. Brian Fischer, pastor of Boise's Community Church of the Valley, and himself a past target of protest by the Westboro Baptist Church, decried Phelps' plan. "What Phelps is doing is a reprehensible thing, to take a funeral and turn it into a photo op for his hate cause," Fischer said. "We hope everyone will ignore Phelps' group."
| Since he has a right to make an ass of himself, I guess that's the best available course. If the country was the fascist state that the lefties keep harping it is, a swarm of brownshirts would descend upon him and kick his ass all the way back to where he came from. But it's not, so they won't. And despite my dislike of brownshirts, I'll add: darn it. |
In 2003, Phelps demanded that he be allowed to erect an anti-gay monument in a Boise public park. To avoid a lawsuit from his group, city officials voted in 2004 that a Ten Commandments monument be moved out of the park to a private setting.
I pray that veterans assemble in force at that funeral, each carrying an axe handle with a black ribbon around it, and when Phelps and his swine herd show up, to beat them until each and every one has to spend six months in the hospital.
| That would be the brownshirt alternative I was just mentioning. I'd rather see some intelligent setup work by duly sworn officers of the law and the legal system. Since they're coming from Kansas to Idaho, they're not walking. That's an excellent opportunity for enterprising patrolmen to make their states a lot of money with tickets for speeding, seatbelt violations, unsafe vehicles, aggressive driving, failure to signal when changing lanes, emissions violations, failure to make a full stop, tire tread too thin, all sorts of horrible things. And then there's disturbing the peace, assembly without a license, noise pollution, littering, jay-walking, damage to public property... I like abuse of police power only slightly less than I like swarms of brownshirts, but there are exceptions to every rule, aren't there? |
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