This church group is sick.
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Anti-Gay Kansas Church May Cancel Protests at Funerals for Slain
Amish Girls
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
The controversial anti-homosexual Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.,
plans to stage a protest at the funerals of the five Amish girls executed in their Pennsylvania school, according to a flyer
posted on the church's Web site.
The church is protesting the funerals because of the attendance of Pennsylvania
Gov. Ed Rendell, who has spoken out against the church publicly, the flyer says. Both Amish and non-Amish residents of Lancaster
County — where the shooting took place — have vowed to not allow any protesters anywhere near the funeral services.
But the daughter of the church's pastor, Rev. Fred Phelps, told FOXNews.com
on Wednesday the church would cancel the protests if given media time on radio and television as a platform to espouse Westboro's
beliefs.
"We're not going to any of the Amish funerals — that's the agreement we're
making — that we won't go to any of them," Shirley Phelps-Roper told FOXNews.com.
Phelps-Roper defended the church's decision to protest at the Amish girls' funerals.
"Those Amish people, everyone is sitting around talking about those poor little
girls — blah, blah, blah — they brought the wrath upon themselves," Phelps-Roper said, adding that the Amish "don't
serve God, they serve themselves."
Unwelcome Protest On Monday, Charles Carl Roberts IV killed five girls —
Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7 —
in a rural Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pa.
Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Crime Center
Donald Kraybill, a professor of sociology at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster
County, Pa., calls the church's plans a publicity stunt.
"I don't think there's any connection between the Amish incident and their agenda.
They just want to get in the spotlight," Kraybill said. "It's giving them national attention and it's a cheap and easy and
really terrible way to gain some visibility."
The church's latest flyer, posted on its Web site, www.godhatesfags.com, notes these protests will be against Rendell for "slanderous" statements against
the church.
Westboro's latest rhetoric is in line with the other beliefs of it's 70 church
members, who hold that the deaths of U.S. troops are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.
The Westboro Baptist Church has made its name demonstrating at the funerals of
soldiers killed in the Iraq war. Their controversial and colorful placards proclaim their anti-gay stance with slogans such
as "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "America Is Doomed" and "Soldier Fag in Hell."
Before it garnered national attention, the church made its name around Kansas,
where 16 years ago, it started protested the funerals of AIDS victims. And while their demonstrations of late have focused
on the funerals of U.S. soldiers, Westboro church members have taken their picket signs to the memorials for the 12 Sago miners
who perished in January in West Virginia.
Earlier this year, prompted by the church protests, Congress passed a law that
banned protesters from military funerals at federal cemeteries. More than a dozen states have passed similar legislation creating
protest-free buffer zones around cemeteries during funerals.
Phelps-Roper told FOXNews.com in February that the church has a right to protest.
"We are delivering a message," Phelps-Roper said. "God is punishing this nation
and he is using the IED [improvised explosive device] as his weapon of choice."
STATE CORRUPTION STARTS IN
ITS SUPREME COURT'S OFFICE OF ATTORNEY ETHICS
