Remember Gays, Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires!

There have been a lot of images, statements, and actions in the wake of last week’s massacre at Virginia Tech that ought to make your blood boil. Within hours of the horror, the far-left blame machine went in to full speed screaming that President Bush was responsible for the carnage because he refused to push for a renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban some three years ago. Somehow it slipped their minds that Seung-Hui Cho used handguns to commit his slaughter, not AK-47’s. They cried out for tougher gun laws claiming gun control might have prevented the rampage. In a spectacular bit of irony, the Mayor of Hiroshima demonstrated how effective Japan’s strict gun laws worked when he was shot to death the day after the Virginia Tech massacre.

They furthered their amendment-per-week attack on the United States Constitution by braying for the repeal of the Second Amendment (by the way, Harry Reid intends to announce the quartering of American troops in red state small towns). The media did their part to infuriate their viewers by sensationalizing the brutal murder of 32 Virginia Tech students and teachers and by showing Cho’s videotaped vitriol. In so doing, they gave Cho a posthumous forum for his rage and provided inspiration to potential adolescent mass murderers across the country. Not to be outdone in making a terrible tragedy that much worse, the one and only Fred Phelps and his followers in the Westboro Baptist Church announced last week that they intended to protest the funerals of these 32 victims.

Phelps blames the slaughter on the university itself for its leniency toward homosexuals (i.e. treating them like human beings) and said those killed last week are in hell for not being “true Christians.” They claim Cho was sent by God on a mission to punish those he killed for their tolerance of homosexuals. Also, they claim Cho is with his victims in hell because he broke God’s commandment not to kill. In case that confused you, Shirley Phelps-Roper cleared it up in an interview with CBS: “he is in hell, but he was also fulfilling the word of God.” I’ll give you another moment to think about that one.

These actions and statements are as bigoted as they are idiotic, and are to be expected from a group made famous for its protest of military funerals and for its websites “GodHatesFags.com” and “GodHatesAmerica.com.” Phelps and his followers (mostly relatives through blood or marriage) believe each soldier’s death is God’s punishment for America’s tolerance of gays, and Phelps even made overtures to Saddam and paid tribute to his regime before the war. They also praise disasters around the world, both natural and artificial, and blame them on gays (AIDS, 9/11, the Asian Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina are just a few recent high-profile examples). They even go after other churches and denominations as well as the likes of Billy Graham for refusing to preach their hatred of homosexuals. They refer to Graham as a “hell-bound false prophet.” Last October they also planned protests for the funerals of those killed in a horrific Amish schoolhouse shooting, armed with signs calling the grade school girls “whores.”

Thankfully, this exercise in shame was narrowly averted by radio talk show host Mike Gallagher who offered the group his entire program this Tuesday in exchange for a canceling of their protests. He made the same invitation in order to stop the protests of the Amish funerals. While he could not disagree with the Wesboro Baptist Church more strongly, Gallagher believes as I do that giving them airtime is preferable for these grieving families as well as the Blacksburg community who can simply turn off their radios. Gallagher is a Catholic and thus a target of Phelps’ message of hate as I would assume I am for being an Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church as you recall recently began ordaining gay clergy.

I personally disagree with this and other policies within the church, but that hardly means that our gay priests and bishops (as well as those who elected and ordained them) are doomed to eternal damnation in hell. If anything, hell should be just as full of homosexuals as it would be liars, thieves, adulterers, idolaters, and the Godless. Even if homosexuality is a sin, Christians are taught to hate the sin but love the sinner. Phelps and his ilk do not follow this belief in forgiveness and I dare say they are the ones who are not “true Christians.” They are to Christianity what Al-Qaeda is to Islam and should be discredited and condemned by Christians and non-Christians alike.