Protest at Soldier's Funeral Brings a Massachusetts Town Together
# A big turnout and police bagpipes drown out a Kansas group opposed to homosexuality.
By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer
MARBLEHEAD, Mass. — This proud old seaport, whose sons and daughters have fought in every American war, was grieving for Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Piper. The 43-year-old Green Beret died after his Humvee hit a roadside bomb June 3 in Afghanistan.
When word got out that demonstrators from Kansas planned to disrupt Piper's funeral Monday, residents vowed not to let them interfere with the tribute to their hometown hero.
"I was worried that it would fester anger," said Louise Moore, 39, fighting back tears and waving a small American flag. "Instead it got everyone together."
The 14 demonstrators from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., picketed Monday on a corner near the Old North Church, a Congregational parish founded in 1635, soon after Marblehead was settled. The followers of the Rev. Fred Phelps, who blame American tolerance of homosexuality for the Sept. 11 attacks and the resulting U.S. military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, have targeted Massachusetts for protests because it is the only state where same-sex marriage is legal.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, a lawyer for the Kansas church, said Monday that the funeral demonstration was nothing personal against Piper, who was not gay.
"We are protesting the sins of this nation," Phelps-Roper said. "That doesn't exclude him."
The group also has demonstrated at high school and middle school graduations across Massachusetts, contending that school curricula promote homosexuality.
So the guy who's funeral this was, wasn't gay? Man, the Christian Fundies aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, are they?
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
I thought we agreed Phelps no longer counted as an actual person.
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. - Douglas Adams
Kylere wrote:Damn these people are as bad as Michael Moore.
it takes a pretty fucking large douchebag to be so insecure about their own political beliefs that they have to bring up someone on the left even in a thread about fred phelps.
These wackos threatened to come and protest a funeral for a soldier here in WI a couple of weeks ago. For some reason they never showed up. They probably remembered that everyone owns guns here. All they want is attention. If Journalists would just shun them, they would go away.
Kylere wrote:Damn these people are as bad as Michael Moore.
it takes a pretty fucking large douchebag to be so insecure about their own political beliefs that they have to bring up someone on the left even in a thread about fred phelps.
it takes a pretty fucking large douchebag to be so insecure about their own political beliefs that they have to bring up someone else's im a in a thread about fred phelps.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
Man, the Christian Fundies aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, are they?
