Posted on 06/15/2005 6:30:56 AM PDT by Hatman
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.
Caldwell Police Chief Bob Sobba said he cannot bar Phelps from going to the public funeral, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Albertson College of Idaho in that city.
"While we respect Mr. Phelps' right to protest, we would hope that he would respect the family and friends of this young person by not disrupting the memorial," Sobba said.
Idaho Air National Guard Lt. Tony Vincelli, acting as spokesman for French's family, said there were no plans to change the funeral arrangements.
The Rev. Brian Fischer, pastor of Boise's Community Church of the Valley, and himself a past target of protest by the Westboro Baptist Church, decried Phelps' plan.
"What Phelps is doing is a reprehensible thing, to take a funeral and turn it into a photo op for his hate cause," Fischer said.
"We hope everyone will ignore Phelps' group."
In 2003, Phelps demanded that he be allowed to erect an anti-gay monument in a Boise public park. To avoid a lawsuit from his group, city officials voted in 2004 that a Ten Commandments monument be moved out of the park.
He married some God-awful harridan years ago and cranked out about a dozen or so kids. Most make up his 'church' congregation but some have split from his cult. I think they make up the most disfunctional family west of the Missouri.
I know -- but I think my theory (self-loathing repression case) is the most plausible explanation for this nutjob.
this guy is over the top
I believe Phelps' two eldest sons left the cult and rightly spilled the beans on their old man's insanity and abuse of the remaining, obviously brain-washed family members who make up what the MSM likes to refer to as a "church."
Fred Phelps is an evil, abusive, hate-filled creep who loves the limelight and knows the MSM will cover his antics to make decent Christians look bad.
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.
Phelps is a nutjob and makes the rest of us who oppose the homosexual agenda look bad. I sometimes wonder if he is a plant, not the real deal. Plus he does miss the point of where God loves the sinner and hates the sin.
"I'm almost certain that Phelps et al are leftists that put on an act to portray the 'Religious Right' as hateful nuts."
Bingo!
Very embarassing, and he's a democrat.
Phelps is not a patriot. He leaches off the blood of soldiers far better than him and his group of the infamously misguided.
I regret that he carries the name of Christian and of baptist.
While I have no problem with his right to believe what he wants about America, God, and the rightness of this or any other war, he doesn't have the right to desecrate the funeral and/or memorial service of someone else's family member.
I truly would arrest this man for shouting fire in a crowded theater if he carries out his plan to violate this (or any) family's ceremony.
[Post redacted because it would advocate violence against Fred Phelps]
His website is here .
Read it at your own risk.
To protest anyone's memorial service is beyond sick.
Fred Phelps is way past being sick.
I guess you are correct, you have to be deranged or know how they think in order to follow this line of reasoning.
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