The guy is a freakin' nutcase, no doubt.
BOISE, Idaho -- A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said he's coming to Idaho tomorrow 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.
"We're coming," Phelps said yesterday.
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. 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.
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. "An all-American girl from a society of all-American heretics," he said. "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...
So let me get this straight-ish:
He's picketing the funeral of a soldier who wasn't gay, who had nothing to do with the bombing that he's upset about, who as far as can be determined led what he himself calls an "all-American life". And he's doing this because .... because...
Well. Yes. Quite. That's kind of the problem right there, isn't it?
Granted, this is going to get him publicity, but what else will it get him? Most of the people who might agree with him on his antigay stance will likely be revolted that he's protesting at the funeral of someone who laid down their life because their country asked them to. And he seems to be doing it merely because he can.
(I wouldn't have thought that a funeral of a nonpublic person was quite "public" in the legal sense of "we have to allow protests here", but apparently that's the case. A pity, really.)
Posted by iain at June 15, 2005 01:39 PM
