Oh, Hell No, Bitches

I live a couple miles from the Lane Bryant store that was the site of a horrible shooting this past week.

Five people died. They haven’t caught the gunman.

Two of the victims have funerals this Saturday… and Fred Phelps‘ people are coming to picket.

Here’s one description from their “picket schedule”:

St. Damian Church 5220 W. 155th St. This is for the funeral of Sarah T. Szafranski. God is killing your children! You have institutionalized sin and shame by breaking the moral compass of this generation, and you have raised them for the Devil. Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do (John 8:44). Because you have refused to obey the Commandments of the Lord Your God, namely, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (Leviticus 18:22), and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:17-18); and instead of doing these, have called him a liar by saying it is okay to live any filthy life style that you desire to take course in, YOU HAVE REAPED THE SWORD. YOU HAVE REAPED THE WHIRLWIND. The LORD is called the Man of War, and he is fighting against you, and you are not prospering. You say, “We shall rebuild”, but God has cursed the works of your hand: think WILDFIRES, burning down millions of acres of farmland; think TORNADOES, tearing apart communities, like in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, and Arkansas. You have only begun to pay for the crimes you have committed against the Servants of God. Prepare to meet thy God, oh America. America is Doomed! Amen.

And here’s the other:

Leak & Sons Funeral Home 18400 S. Pulaski Rd. This is for the funeral of Connie R. Woolfolk. She was put to death by the LORD of Hosts for the crimes and sins of Doomed America. Why have you offered up lies and vain words? Why do you not rather CUT OFF the idolatry, the adultery, and lying and obey God? Proverbs 1:20 ¶ Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets [THINK PICKETING, PREACHING ON THE STREETS WITH SIGNS, ROBUST, THE FEAR OF GOD; OBEY GOD! Proverbs 1:7): 21 She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, 22 How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? 23 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. 24 Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; 25 But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: 26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; 27 When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. 28 Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: 29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: 30 They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. 31 Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. 32 For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. 33 But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. America is Doomed! Amen.

Why these funerals?

No reason. America supports the gays. Therefore, your funeral must be picketed.

“It’s hard to imagine any human being being so heartless to someone who is mourning the loss of a loved one,” said [Illinois] Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday.

Quinn pushed successfully for legislation keeping protesters 200 feet from military funerals, and he said he hoped law enforcement remembered that the Lane Bryant funerals would fall under that law as well.

“They have First Amendment rights to conduct that funeral without any kind of heckling — without any kind of disruption,” Quinn said.

Let’s hope that’s the case.

At least extra police are coming in for the events.

Mother%&$%ers.

On a brighter note: Westboro Baptist Church will be at another nearby funeral on Monday… But at this one, there will be saviors of a unique sort:

Picketing at the funeral for [Lt. David] Schultz will be countered by a group of Patriot Guard Riders, motorcyclists who attend military funerals at the request of family members.

Gary Bogolin, a senior ride captain, said the Patriot Riders’ primary mission is to provide a flagline to show support for the fallen soldier.

“But we also will form a shield between the mourning family and the (Westboro church members),” he said. “All the family sees is a line of American flags. That’s all the family should see. They don’t need any distractions.”

(via Pam’s House Blend)

[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

Drew

Pure insanity. I hope that if I die and they picket my funeral that the family comes packing heat.
Siamang

“But we also will form a shield between the mourning family and the (Westboro church members),” he said.

Notice the parenthetical. What do you want to bet that he said something a bit more descriptive?
Jen

My guess is that Phelps thinks they deserve it for being fat, too. Oh Fred, couldn’t you stick to your homophobia, soldierphobia, and HeathLedgerphobia? Why do you have to add fatphobia to your list of reasons why you are a bastard?
Heather

Where do they get the money to do all of this hate-picketing at funerals? It’s got to be a full-time job, this going around and hating dead people.
Richard Wade

Where do they get the money to do all of this hate-picketing at funerals? It’s got to be a full-time job, this going around and hating dead people.

I heard that Fred and his two demon spawn are all lawyers. (not certain) Maybe they chase ambulences when they need cash.

If a hemorrhoid could have a hemorrhoid it would be called Fred Phelps.
Renacier

http://www.phagsforphelps.com

I kinda agree with them.
Mouse

Fred is a disbarred lawyer, and at least a couple of his kids (he has 13) are lawyers. And they’re incredibly litigious. Not as ambulance chasers, but in their own interest–lots of calling on the First Amendment. Otherwise, they get their money from congregants’ income. Check out Wikipedia for more, though I also lived in Kansas for a time and had personal experience with his picketing. He really loses his power the more one is exposed to him–he’s a broken record.
hoverFrog

I’ve not read Phags for Phelps before but was struck by the honesty of this comment:

I do not like that the Phelps picket funerals. I feel tremendous pity and pain for their victims. But I cannot stop the Phelps. No one can. It is a price we pay for religious freedom and the First Amendment. If I could say anything to the grieving victims of the Phelps’ pickets, I would promise them that most everyone in the world believes that the Phelps’ message of hate is pure evil. Any belief is only as strong as the feelings behind it — and there are millions more people who believe in love.
: )

Josh Kilmer-Purcell

I think I just like the way that Josh takes something so negative and vile and turns it round to get something positive from it.
HappyNat

Why these funerals?

I don’t think it even matters to Phelps anymore he has just become an attention whore. The fact that the killings were nationwide news is enough to get him to crawl out of his slimhole.
Wildwing

Get people together and stop them! We did it here in Ferndale, MI. One of the local churches organized it, but everyone of every type (including us atheists) and stopped him from coming. I’m not sure exactly how it was done but I know it was. Good luck stopping this moron.
Vincent

Does Phelps think if America outlawed homosexuality, nobody would ever die again?
Eshto

I’m glad someone already posted the phagsforphelps website.

America does not generally support the gays. Few straight people outside the local community gave a rip when Phelps was protesting Matthew Shephard and other dead faggots.

Straight people only became concerned when they started picketing soldiers’ funerals (none of which were gay, to my knowledge).

Everyone acts outraged, and yet real gay soldiers are still getting kicked out of the army (even after getting purple hearts) under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and lawmakers are still fighting tooth and nail against hate crime legislation, against the ENDA law which would prohibit workplace discrimination, against gay marriage rights – and mainstream America is still voting in favor of all this anti-gay legislation.

At least half of America votes the exact same way that Phelps probably does – against gay rights. So forget about Phelps, he’s not the problem.
Craig

So do they also picket the funerals of dead Westboro church members?
If they don’t, maybe we can! 🙂
KC

Bitches?!?

Sorry Hemant but it kind of takes the thunder out of your outrage when you call a group of bigots “bitches” seeing as it’s a term commonly used to degenerate women when it’s not being used to impugn the masculinity of (other) men.
Karen

Notice the parenthetical. What do you want to bet that he said something a bit more descriptive?

🙂 I had exactly the same thought, Siamang! Too bad they couldn’t print exactly what he said.
Richard Wade

So do they also picket the funerals of dead Westboro church members?

You beat me to it, Craig. Fred looks like he’s getting old, unless a steady diet of hate is what does that. When he dies (hopefully today) will his minions have a hate fest over his corpse too, saying that he’s burning in hell along with the others he has condemned? He’s part of America too. Or is being a disciple of hate the way into heaven?
Richard Wade

Eshto, you said:

Few straight people outside the local community gave a rip when Phelps was protesting Matthew Shephard and other dead faggots.

Straight people only became concerned when they started picketing soldiers’ funerals (none of which were gay, to my knowledge).

I understand your frustration, Eshto but please don’t let that frustration turn to resentment against your straight allies. We have been here long before Phelps. There were four gay people in my family and they were entirely part of the family without any condition. They are all now deceased. I saw what they went through every day of their courageous lives and I have worked against the discrimination I saw against them all my life. I have faced down bigots, donated money, campaigned against political candidates, written letters and been the only “straight guy” in protest efforts. Phelps is evil equally for his homophobia and his cruelty to straight soldiers’ families, and you’re right he’s only a tiny part of what must be opposed. More straight people work to oppose it than you know.

Yes, the majority of Americans still vote the way Phelps probably does, but it’s just barely a majority. As you pointed out it’s about half. Every day it gets weaker and you do have genuine friends in the straight community, not just people outraged by Phelp’s victimizing of straight people.
terri

The best thing anyone could do is boycott Phelps’ funeral – to emphasize how useless he was, rather than stage a huge protest for such a sick man. I am surprised, however, that there haven’t been more “incidents” against them around soldiers’ funerals. The Patriot Guard Riders have done a great service, but I’m pretty sure that if one of my extended family died in the Middle East and these fuckers showed up, something would happen before, or certainly after, the funeral… At a minimum, they’d have car issues well before they got to town. Maybe we, as a nation, are getting better at acceptance of Constitutional Rights?
jtwurth

Could a case be made that these wackjobs are mentally abusing their children by bringing them up in a volatile environment filled with what is considered by many to be almost psychotic behavior?
J.h.

I actually went to a military funeral near Fort Hood today, and held a flag in line with the Patriot Guard Riders. An absolutely amazing and solemn experience.