freak alert
Thomas Krause and Deborah Ziff over at TBO.com have a fun little piece about our favorite hate group, Westboro Baptist Church. The “church” has announced that they would “arrive in Tampa today” to protest the funeral of Staff Sgt. Joseph Fuerst. As classy as this would make them seem their lawyer had some rather tart replies for the reporters’ questions.
Westboro’s Web site and e-mailed statement included several hate-filled comments about U.S. soldiers and homosexuals. It included at least one significant error.
The statement said members will protest the death of Army Sgt. Bryan Luckey, who died last week in Iraq. A phone call to Shirley Phelps-Roper, the group’s Kansas attorney corrected the error.
Phelps-Roper yelled obscenities and scripture into the phone on Wednesday and said the protest will be at Fuerst’s, not Luckey’s, service.
Sometimes, she said, plans change and protesters are diverted elsewhere, but people would arrive in Tampa today.
She said they will not break the law.
“We’re never within 300 feet,” Phelps-Roper yelled. “We never were before they passed that goofy, worthless, impotent law.”
She is referring to the State and Federal laws barring protests at military funerals. This isn’t the first time that Westboro has threatened to protest a local funeral. In January the Sarasota Herald reported Westboro made similiar threats against the funeral of Army pilot Kyle Jackson. I could find no reports that anybody actually showed up for that protest, and a drive by the Christ the King Church at Dale Mabry and Henderson this morning at about 9 A.M. revealed only mourners, a few bored looking FHP motorcycle officers and a couple of news vans.
The ACLU has warned Minnesota that these “anti-protest” laws may backfire. The laws, although widely supported and unchallenged even by the ACLU, seem to be counter to the First amendment. The horrible irony is that a lawsuit by the group could result in monetary awards funding further “protests”.
In the meantime lets just hope these nitwits can’t find a ride to Florida anytime in the near future.
Tags: diversity, law enforcement, military, politics, tampa
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July 7th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Just in case anybody has doubts, true Christians ARE NOT misguided wackjobs like this (alleged) attorney from Kansas. However, they might use obscenities on rare occasions, like when hammer hits thumb or the Bucs throw an INT resulting in a TD. Hey, some things are too much!
Meantime, I feel terrible for families who have to endure not just the life of a beloved soldier, but the potential circus that groups like Westboro wants to create. What was that Pogo once said about meeting the enemy?