Posted on 06/27/2005 6:16:48 AM PDT by cwiz24
Protesters To Disrupt Soldier's Funeral
Radical Church Group Says U.S. Being Punished
MARBLEHEAD, Mass. -- A Marblehead soldier who was killed in Afghanistan is scheduled to be laid to rest Monday, but a church group from Kansas is expected to try to disrupt the services and police are on alert for any problems.
NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff reported that Staff Sgt. Christoper Piper, 43, served in both Afghanistan and Iraq and was awarded a bronze star for his combat service. The Green Beret died when his convoy was bombed June 3 in Afghanistan and a right-wing Protestant Christian church group from Topeka, Kansas is planning to demonstrate at Piper's funeral services at the Old North Church. They claim U.S. soldiers like Piper are dying because the country is being punished for its tolerance of what they see as immoral behavior, such as homosexuality.
The group, from the Westboro Baptist Church, protested several weeks ago in Dracut and Lexington, Mass., carrying signs depicting homosexual sex, with slogans such as "Pope In Hell" and "God Hates Fags," and "God Hates The U.S." Police called in extra officers to handle the demonstrations.
"I had 30 motor units, I had 12 to 14 mountain bike officers, plus I had a complement of 37 of my officers," Lexington Police Chief Kevin Richardson said.
There were no serious problems. Police plan to escort the Kansas group to the funeral services at 9:30 a.m., and will escort them away again. The police said they are protecting the group's free speech rights.
Gotta be that a-hole Fred Phelps's group. They always fail to mention that his "church" is basically made up of his family members and no one else.
"They aren't my right-wing."
Same sentiment from me.
Fred Phelps is a carny. It's no secret why the media loves him so much they give him all the free publicity he desires.
Fred Phelps, IMO, is a waste of skin. If I go any further, the mods are going to jump all over my bad language.
And they love to imply that this is the way the rest of the right-wing feels. They should clairify their "right-wing" identification with something, like "radical" or "stark-raving mad".
If that were a funeral with myself or any of my friends present, the protesters would have been beaten to death.
This smells funny...like a CODE PINK group intentionally doing something this heinous, doesn't it?
Yeah right!
It is. He just got finished protesting Billy Graham's crusade. He looks like the old guy from the Phantasm movies
I agree--they have the constitutional right to protest against whatever they want to. But have some freaking decency and let a mother bury her son in peace.
Freddie Phelps...great. Good men catch bullets, but idiots just keep nattering on and on and on.
"If that were a funeral with myself or any of my friends present, the protesters would have been beaten to death."
That makes two of us. Such a protester in my neck of the woods would likely awake to find himself in a body cast.
Fred Phelps runs for various state offices every two years as a Democrat. He's only "right-wing" in the sense that everything that reporters hate is "right-wing."
I saw some pictures from this event. The daughter of the loony pastor carried a sign that read "Thank God for 9-11."
Yep. Conatgious funeralitis. There would be a lot of funerals breaking out for any protestor I could get my hands on.
At the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard, they held up signs reading "No Fags in Heaven" and "God Hates Fags." According to their Web site, they have staged "20,000" protests across the nation and around the world in the last decade. They believe that "God's hatred is one of His holy attributes." They are the congregants of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.
Incorporated in 1967 as a not-for-profit organization, the virulently homophobic Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) considers itself an "Old School (or, Primitive)" Baptist Church. The Church is led by the septuagenarian Reverend Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., and many WBC congregants are related to Phelps by blood. His wife, several of his children and dozens of his grandchildren frequent the church.
While WBC has picketed the gay community at hundreds of events nationwide, most of the individuals protested by the Church are not homosexual. In fact, WBC most often targets people it mistakenly claims are gay or those it believes to be encouraging homosexuality. Many WBC fliers emphasize the race or religion of these individuals, suggesting that the Church's hate spreads beyond its abhorrence of homosexuality. What appears to be anti-gay rhetoric is often a vehicle for WBC's anti-Semitism, hatred of other Christians, and even racism, though in the 1980s Fred Phelps received awards from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks in Government and the Bonner Springs branch of the NAACP for his work on behalf of Black clients.
Trained as a lawyer, Fred Phelps was disbarred in 1979 by the Kansas Supreme Court, which asserted that he had "little regard for the ethics of his profession." The formal complaint against Phelps charged that he misrepresented the truth in a motion for a new trial in a case he had brought, and that he held the defendant in the case up to "unnecessary public ridicule for which there is no basis in fact." Following his disbarment from Kansas State courts, Phelps continued to practice law in Federal courts. In 1985, nine Federal court judges filed a disciplinary complaint charging him and six of his family members, all attorneys, with making false accusations against them. The Phelpses fought the complaint but lost. In 1989, Fred Phelps agreed to surrender his license to practice law in Federal court in exchange for the Federal judges allowing the other members of his family to continue practicing in Federal court.
In 1991, WBC staged its first public demonstration, targeting a park in Topeka allegedly frequented by gays. Thousands of protests have followed, and WBC shows no sign of slowing down. In addition to speeches on the picket lines, the Church spreads its hateful message via faxed fliers and "News Releases." These faxed documents also appear at WBC's notorious Web site, Godhatesfags.com, along with photos of Church pickets and a schedule of upcoming demonstrations. A second WBC Web site, Godhatesamerica.com, contends that the United States is "doomed" because it supports gays. According to Fred Phelps, "God invented the Internet for us to preach on."
The following quotations from WBC materials and other sources expose the Church's views on Jews, gays, Blacks, Christians and the United States. WBC's own words best demonstrate the wide range and disturbing nature of its hatred.
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