Hatred From The Right

Hatred is ugly no matter which side of the political spectrum it comes from. Normally, I take the political left to task for their blind hatred of conservatives, Christians, traditional values, President Bush, etc. (there's too many to count). But, most of those individuals can't hold a candle to the psycho cultists at the Westboro Baptist Church. According to this article, this organization:

...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.

***

[Pastor Fred] Phelps said he and his congregants are targeting the funerals because God's way of punishing an "evil nation" of "fags and fag enablers" is to "pick off its children."

"I don't have any sympathy for these parents. They're all going to hell," Phelps said. "The family's in pain because they haven't obeyed the Lord God."

These people are insane and morally repugnant. They bare no resemblance to Christ, nor do they embody His principles and commands-one of the foremost of which is to love thy neighbor. They are not in any way representative of Christianity.

I think Mark Potok, the director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, had it right when he said,

"This man probably thinks more about gay sex than any other person in the United States of America and one can only guess at what that means," he said. "Many of the most homophobic people are deeply afraid that they might be gay."