Baptist sectarians disrupt military funerals

No difference between these Kansas' Baptists and other hate-filled jerks around the world.

Folks, according to Yahoo News / AFP:

FLUSHING, United States (AFP) - Five women sang and danced as they held up signs saying "thank God for dead soldiers" at the funeral of an army sergeant who was killed by an Iraqi bomb.

For them, it was the perfect way to spread God's word: America was being punished for tolerating homosexuality.

For the hundreds of flag waving bikers who came to this small town in Michigan Saturday to shield the soldier's family, it was disgusting.

"That could be me in that church," said Jackie Sandler whose son Keith is currently serving his second tour of duty in
Iraq.

The fringe group of fire and brimstone Baptists from Kansas has been courting controversy for more than 15 years, traveling the country with their hateful signs and slogans.

The Westboro Baptist Church first gained national notoriety when they picked the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay.

They have since picketed the funerals of Frank Sinatra and
Bill Clinton's mother, celebrated the terrorist attacks of September 11 as an act of God's wrath, and have even targeted Santa Claus and the Ku Klux Klan.

But it was the callousness and cruelty of harassing the grieving families of soldiers at dozens of funerals across the country that has sparked a grassroots movement of bikers determined to drown out the jeers and taunts.

Read the whole piece here.

Commentary. The behavior of these "Christian" sectarians offends me at so many levels, as a Catholic Christian, as a military man, as a human being, that I don't know where to start tearing into this pathetic clique of hateful fanatics. Our soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and coastguardmen are the ones who, through their sacrifice, have bought the freedom of speech these crackpots are abusing when they dare to soil with their presence the funerals of our men and women in uniform.

The problem here is that some people preach so much about God's "hate" that they feel entitled to hate sins and sinners themselves, confident of their eternal impunity. They are wrong.

God's "hate" is not our own. God doesn't "hate" like human beings do. God's "hatred" for sin moves him to Love the sinner inifinitely more, so much so that He gave His own Son, so that anyone who believes in Him, does not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16). These sectarians know Him not, for they do not show love for their neighbor and the love they feel from each other is tainted by their arrogance of divine "hate." Because of their willingness to hate, they are not from God, as the Bible declares, for God is Love (1 John 4:8).

I may get a motorcycle myself, just to be ready in case they make it to my neighborhood. Let us pray, pray for all of them, so that they repent, convert, and be healed.