This made me spit my beer out from laughing. Phelps and his gang of cronies are nothing but attention whores who love to push everyone's buttons and get away with it. Stop giving them the attention that they so desperately crave, and they'll fade away. Easy as that. Problem is, they're so damn good at being inciteful that nobody can turn away from an issue that sticks out like a sore thumb, like this one.
But really, I could interpret a cookbook giving directions on lemon meringue pie, and come out with pecan pie, but really, I'm probably gonna get the gist and make a decent one. I know thats a pooooor metaphor, but ya know.
I think that although it's not nearly as prevalent, it's certainly very bad, especially because it's so under-the-rug, so sinister. My dad is a doctor, and as such he takes trips across the country giving lectures on new medicinal developments and such. One time in Missouri or Mississippi (one of the M's), he met with this doctor who was a racist. He discriminated his patients by assembling a waiting room for patients with insurance, and one for those without, which worked that way because only the black people in his area didn't have insurance. That way, as that doctor said, "The whites don't have to mix with the colored folks." And we're talking last year people, my dad met this guy a year ago. Also, in a more related...and rather weird note, apparently even the KKK is protesting against the WBC: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/30/arlington.cemetery.protesters/index.html?hpt=T2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/westboro-pickets-dunn_n_882299.html Westboro is going to picket Ryan Dunn's funeral, these people really suck.
I think if any of these "Christians" came to protest at one of my loved one's funeral, I feel it would be the will of God to protest my fist into their faces.
I'm sorry, but that's just fucking sick. I'm pretty sure my interpretation of the Bible was to love each other unconditionally. Something that these "Christians" are failing to do. They are interpreting it as hate everyone who isn't exactly like you. And how the fuck can they sit there and say an entire state is evil? And to say "God cut him down" is one of the most heretic things I think I have ever read. It's like they are actually giving the credit to God for his death. It's funny because nowhere in that article did it mention anything about consequences of one's action to drink and drive. I'm not condoning what Dunn did in the least, but to sit there and give God credit for somebody dying is just fucking sick.
The fact that everybody (not just you) takes them seriously and gets so riled up by their actions just gives them more incentive to do this kind of shit.