Funeral Crashers

Is it a big surprise that the ACLU would support idiots who feel called to show up at the funerals of servicemen to inflict even more pain on the mourning families?

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Kansas church group that protests at military funerals nationwide filed suit in federal court, saying a Missouri law banning such picketing infringes on religious freedom and free speech.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo., on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members' funerals with signs condemning homosexuality.

The church and the Rev. Fred Phelps say God is allowing troops, coal miners and others to be killed because the United States tolerates gay men and lesbians....

For the ACLU this lawsuit must be a lot like their work supporting the KKK's right to march. This crazy church is Christian, strike one, and they're opposed to rights for gay people, strike two, BUT, they're engaged in protests that are horribly wrong and cruel beyond the pale, therefore, home-run, bingo, the ACLU will take the case. What is it with the ACLU? More:

"I told the nation, as each state went after these laws, that if the day came that they got in our way, that we would sue them," said [church leader] Phelps's daughter Shirley L. Phelps-Roper, a spokeswoman for the church in Topeka, Kan. "At this hour, the wrath of God is pouring out on this country."

I don't think that God punishes nations because of the actions of some of it's citizens. He doesn't punish a coal miner in West Virginia because of an ordinance passed in San Francisco. If punishes us in this world at all, it's for our own transgressions. And when it comes to transgressions I'm hard put to think of one worse than deliberately bringing pain to the grieving family members at a funeral. Call me over-sensitive, but it seems to me that if I bring wails of pain from someone, there's a good chance that I'm not obeying the "love one another; as I have loved you" commandment.

In the spirit of that love, let me give you some advice: Don't stand next to any of these church-members in a thunderstorm. If God punishes us on earth, these guys are just smouldering piles of ashes waiting to happen.

I guess it's just icing on the cake that this church is wrong in their attitude towards gays as well. If you're going to commit horror in God's name, I guess it doesn't much matter if your underlying motivation is also corrupt. Perhaps they've got their own translation of the bible:

John 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

to which they have added "except for the gay people"