First, if you haven't already, read the Huffington Post's article "Elizabeth Edwards Funeral To Be Picketed By Westboro Baptist Church." Good. You're now up to speed on the cult's newest plot to attract attention to their façade of a church and "speak on the behalf of God." For, of course, God would only choose a very select group of people to share his true beliefs with and, being the infallible one He is, lie to everyone else and cause them to enter damnation. Right.
This is not the first time that these "terrorists" (more on this in a bit) have done something like this, and definitely not the first time that they have caused a swelling of anger within me. You see, it's the entirety of what they stand for that bugs me, their whole "make a big scene to satisfy our fetish for attention" that brings me them erased from the world.
To picket a funeral is childish. Elizabeth Edwards has done, to my knowledge, nothing to Westboro Baptist Church, so they were wronged in no way by her. This leads one to surmise that have an ulterior motive (which they do). As shown by the types of signs they carry—"Thank God for breast cancer"—they see maladies and deaths as God's form of punishment for being a nation of tolerance.
And this is where my sentiment lies: to say that we are to be damned for being tolerant is an idea that must come from the shittiest, most messed-up portions of the brain possible.
WBC misquotes both people and the Bible in an effort to make a point. In their memo, they surely must have taken Elizabeth Edward's words out of context and strung together the statements that they did. I can do that too. Former President George W. Bush must can be proven to have said, publicly, the words "terrorist," "I," "a," and "am." Strung together, that becomes "I am a terrorist." Whether you like him or not, that is a misuse of quotes and is akin to what WBC has done. And by this, WBC can be quoted for saying, "Thank God for" and "gays." So, WBC has said, "Thank God for gays." I'm glad that they've said that.
But they also misquote the Bible (or cite things badly), as seen when they picketed Comic-Con 2010, bearing signs that read: "God hates nerds. Rom. 9:13." Romans 9:13 says, "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." The relationship between these two things is visibly non-existent. If WBC truly feels, however, that these two things are related, they need to go slap whoever it was who taught them to read and understand what they read across the face pretty hard, because they didn't do a very good job at all.
The terrorist organization WBC must be stopped.
Wait, what's that? You don't agree that they're terrorists? Well, according to About.com, the US legal definition of terrorism is:
"...premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents"
WBC has announced plans to picket, so their actions are premeditated. They have a political motive: to say that the US is in the state that it's in for being "tolerant" and "sinning." Last I checked, the people attending a funeral are not all members of the military and carrying guns, so they are noncombatant. And, seeing as WBC is not representative of nor affiliated with the US government, they're a subnational group. There. Proven by definition.
"But, wait," clever readers may be saying. "You've forgotten about the 'violence' portion of the definition." Well, since you brought it up, WBC is not being physically violent. However, they are being emotionally and ideologically violent, and are ready to fight to the bitter end to defend what they're doing as "free speech." So yes, they are violent.
And what do we do with terrorists whose plans are already known? We stop them. Someone should probably get on that.
