Westboro Baptist to Picket Funerals of Virginia Tech Shooting Victims

from godhatesamerica.com, WBC's homepage

"Why did this happen, you ask? It's simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children."

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These people are completely sick. When I first heard about them, on Louis Theroux's BBC special, I was absolutely apalled and enraged at what they were doing, and my opinion of them has just gone downhill from there every time I've heard about them. I mean, they're entitled to their religious beliefs just like everyone else. I understand that, and I don't begrudge them their right to religious freedom, even though I disagree with their hateful message. I don't agree with them, but everyone in America has the right to free speech and the freedom to think for themselves.

However, the funeral thing just goes too far. It's horrible enough that they demonstrate at the funerals of soldiers who've died in Iraq. I mean, imagine that you're a mother trying to bury her 18-year-old child. Hard enough. Then imagine that while you're trying to do that, you have these hateful people with their vulgar messages trying to demonstrate at the funeral. That's horrible. I mean, what right do they have to intrude upon that woman's grief? She didn't do anything wrong, and really, her child didn't either. I don't agree with the war in Iraq, but it's not the soldiers' fault, it's the fault of the politicians who sent the soldiers over there in the first place. Why don't they go demonstrate outside the White House like every other group of demonstrators? No, they have to go make these families' lives just that much more of a living hell. It's sickening.

It seems even worse to me for them to be doing this at the funerals of the victims of the recent Virginia Tech shooting. It's not that it's more sad that these students and faculty members died, but I would think that it would have to be just as difficult, if not more so, for their families. When your child is sent off to war in Iraq, their death is a possibility, and you are well aware of that fact. You know that there's the chance that they'll be coming home in a body bag. These families had no warning. They had no idea that this could ever happen to their child, who was only off at college, minding their own business. I can't believe they would think to use these funerals, intruding upon these families' time of mourning, just to get attention from the media to push their agenda.