Speaking of Memorial Services for Dead Celebrities...

Westboro Baptist Church is planning on picketing the Michael Jackson memorial service on Tuesday. This is going to end well.

From their press release:

07/07/2009 Staples Center - Michael Wacko Jacko Jackson is in hell! 1111 S. Figueroa St WBC will be there to remind you to stop worshiping the dead. We will be there to tell you to Thank God for the death of this filthy, adulterous, idolatrous, gender-confused, nationality-confused, unthankful brute beast. We will be there to remind you that God Killed Wacko Jacko. There is a God, and a Day of Judgment. For you to wallow and murmur against God for his righteous Judgments is sin and will cause YOU to join Michael in hell

This is more publicity than they deserve, really. With the number of people that are expected to at least show up outside of the Staples Center in Los Angeles (never mind get in), I expect L.A.P.D. to keep them as far away as possible for their "safety."

Rhode Island Gives Proper Greeting To Westboro Baptist Church

From the Providence Journal:

Hundreds of Rhode Islanders turned out on street corners Friday in spontaneous opposition to the anti-gay, anti-Jew message of a tiny group of demonstrators from Kansas.

More than 300 students from East Providence High School crammed one corner of the city’s busiest intersection at Taunton and Pawtucket avenues as school let out. Some gripped neon signs supporting gay people. During the school day, students also wore yarmulkes to support their Jewish classmates.

At another corner, 100 or so people, including high school alumni, gathered, holding signs such as “Teach Love, Not Hate” and “Our Giant Signs are Better than Yours.” One even had a pink bunny suit on with “I Love Boys” written on his belly.

On a third corner, five members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., carried epithet-laden picket signs, denouncing homosexuality and declaring, “America is doomed” for tolerating gays and Jews.

I'm glad more and more people are willing to stand up to the Phelps family and the Westboro Baptist Church. We have enough hate in this country, we don't need them trying to spread it further.

Another WBC/Canada Update

According to their spokesperson, some members were able to make it through earlier this week.

An alert that Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day reportedly sent to Canadian borders guards to bar a controversial U.S. church group from entering Canada didn't block some members from getting in, the group's lawyer claimed Friday.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, the daughter of the founding member of the Westboro Baptist Church, told CTV.ca a group of seven members was turned away when they tried to cross the U.S. border into Canada Thursday night. But she said other members managed to get through at another border crossing, although she would not say how many.

Why the hell can't they just leave people alone? The only thing this proves is that they are complete and utter nutjobs. They aren't going to be opening anyone's minds.

But then again, I hope that Phelps-Roper is just exaggerating. They have a history of not showing up to funerals that they say they are going to attend.

Update on WBC Protest

They were stopped at the border.

Earlier this week, the Westboro Baptist Church - an organization branded as a hate group and infamous for protesting the funerals of slain U.S. soldiers - announced they would picket Mr. McLean's funeral to let Canadians know that his decapitation was God's response to Canadian policies enabling abortion, homosexuality and adultery.

But Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of church's founder, Fred Phelps, said a small group of protesters was stopped at the Canada-U.S. border on Thursday afternoon.

"They won't let us in, but we have a group that will cross in another spot," she said. "They'll have to strip search everyone who crosses that border or they won't know who we are. They'll have to see the WBC (Westboro Baptist Church) tattoo on our butts."

The resistance to the planned funeral protest started on Facebook yesterday morning when Jim Cotton, a resident of Winnipeg Beach, launched a page asking city residents to help protect Mr. McLean's funeral.

"We want to protect the family so they don't come out of the church service and see people shouting obscenities," said Mr. Cotton. "I've never met the McLean family. I've just been moved by the whole story."

Mr. Cotton was outraged and asked Winnipeg Facebookers to circle around the seven picketers tomorrow and pray for Mr. McLean's family.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, Mr. Cotton's page had over 100 friends. Rodney Taylor, an Ottawa resident, found the page and pitched in.

Mr. Taylor phoned the Prime Minister's Office, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's office and border services, asking them to keep the Westboro group out of the country. He also created his own Facebook page urging other offended Canadians to follow his lead.

"These people are callous, vicious and shouldn't be let into our country," he said. "We have freedom of speech, but they are inciting hate."

Mr. Taylor's plan worked. Winnipeg NDP MP Pat Martin said his office was flooded with phone calls yesterday from angry Winnipeggers.

"These people [from Westboro] are almost as crazy as the murderer," he said. "If they are here to disrupt the social order, that constitutes grounds to deny them entry. There is no redeeming virtue in the message they are bringing."

According to Mr. Martin, Mr. Day's office sent an alert to border patrol to "look out" for people with signs and pamphlets that fit the hateful messages that the church promotes and to keep them out of the country.

"In the opinion of his office, coming up here with the message they're articulating constitutes hate speech," said Mr. Martin.

Never underestimate the power of pissed off Canadians.

Westboro Baptist Church Is Stretching

Maybe they're just mad that they had a fire at their compound recently and needed something to do.

WINNIPEG -- A fundamentalist church group from the U.S. has announced it plans to picket the funeral of Tim McLean Jr. in Winnipeg, declaring, "God is punishing Canada."

"People are absolutely outraged about it," said Doug Mitchell, a friend of McLean's for about seven years.

Led by pastor Fred Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas issued a release saying they would picket McLean's funeral this weekend.

Phelps' daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said about seven church members are expected to come to Winnipeg.

"What we're doing is trying to connect dots," Phelps-Roper told Sun Media last night.

"We're trying to get you to see that your rebellion against the standards of God, your disobedience to the commandments - your idols, your false gods, your filthy ways have brought wrath upon your head," she said.

The group has held pickets and protested on issues throughout Canada and the U.S., commonly with only a small handful of people in attendance.

In 1999, the group burned a Canadian flag and protested in Ottawa following the Supreme Court ruling which ordered Ontario to include same-sex couples in the definition of spouse.

The church has also developed a reputation for not always following through on protests.

"If it's not a hoax, then they're morally deranged," said Arthur Schafer, director of the University of Manitoba's Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics.

Mitchell said he and other friends are disturbed by the church's plans.

He said he hopes members of the church don't attend the funeral for his friend who was murdered and decapitated aboard a Greyhound bus last week.

"When it comes to the (Westboro) Baptist Church, they don't even deserve to be on the same page as Tim McLean. He was too great a guy," said Mitchell.

This is just despicable and sick for the WBC to do. They have so much hatred that they are wiling to go into another country in order to make their "point."

Maybe we should send them to another country where this kind of thing isn't tolerated.

Westboro Baptist Church To Strike Again

They are going to be protesting the funeral of George Carlin.

From their website:

George Carlin is in hell! He used his platform to make a mock of sin and scoff at the Lord God of Eternity. So when Carlin died and split hell wide open, God laughed! "I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh" Prov. 1:26. Looks like God got the last laugh, Carlin -- as always!

I looked up the Bible quote that is highlighted above -- the link is mine to a site that explains what the quote means. Proverbs was written as a letter from a father to his son, so the quote above is a father warning his son about mocking God, lest God punish him.

But Proverbs is also Old Testament, which most Christians that I know see more as the old way of doing things.

They are hurting themselves more and more with these stupid protests. Eventually they are going to go too far, and it will be too late.

WBC Gets PWNED!

Story behind this is here.

Basically, three students at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menemonic, WI, had died in a fire. For some reason, this caught the attention of the Westboro Baptist Church. If you aren't familiar with who they are (and I think everyone is by now), they are a hate group disguising themselves as Christians who never learned the idea that even though we may disagree with someone we should still love them as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Their "response" to the fire is here.

Well, the students at UW-Stout weren't going to take it lying down. Despite warnings by administration to leave the protesters alone and not engage them, over 1,000 students showed up at the much smaller protest and shouted down the WBC members. They ended up leaving after about 15 minutes.



They weren't going to take it lying down. And I don't blame them.