God Vs. The First Ammendment

Kansas minister Fred W. Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka has provided me with another reason to skeptical of religion.

Minister Phelps and his congregation travel the country staging protests at the funerals of military service members. Their most notorious demonstration occurred at the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in 2006.

Snyder's family sued Phelps for invasion of privacy and emotional distress, winning $10 million. The award was later reduced to $5 million and then overturned by a U.S. Court of Appeals.

It has now moved to the Supreme Court. (read the story here)

Phelps and his followers have protested at over 200 funerals across the country carrying signs with slogans such as "Thank God for Dead Soldiers", "Thank God for Breast Cancer" and "God Hates You".

Their website address is godhatesfags.com.

They claim to hate anybody who supports abortion and homosexuality, which begs the question...If we had the ability to determine the sexual orientation of an unborn child - would God want us to abort the gay ones?

There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin.

Should I start by reciting some of the Dogma I learned as a youth?

Such as God is love and God loves ALL of His children.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but I took those things literally. We are all God's children and He loves us all equally. Apparently Phelps believes that God's love is not only unequal, but discriminatory as well. Go figure...

Maybe a better place to start would be to explain to the protesters that those fallen service men and women died in the service of their country. The very same country that guarantees people the right to free speech and thus allows them to stage protests such as these. Those things are guaranteed by The Constitution - a document which has been defended by military personnel for over 200 years - and many of them were gay.

Maybe I should have started with their slogan "Thank God for Dead Soldiers".

Am I the only one who sees the absolute idiocy with this?

Doesn't the Bible say something about "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"

Now maybe I'm misinterpreting something again - but if God says that killing is wrong, wouldn't it be safe to assume that thanking him for the death of another person is pretty bad too?

Another from the top ten..."Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother".

That puts me in a quandary since my father served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and he is now dead.

How am I supposed to honor him and thank God he is dead at the same time?Now I have a really stupid question;

If all the soldiers were dead, who would be left to prevent China, North Korea, Iran or any of the dozens of terrorist organizations out there from coming in and saying "Okay, we're in charge now. That freedom of speech and freedom of religion stuff you had...hope you enjoyed it while it lasted."

Nobody likes it, but for as long as man has been around, war has been a fact of life - which means that in order to protect that which you hold dear you must have an armed military made up of members willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so others don't have to.

In closing, I only have this to say...

If Phelps and his followers got their instructions from God - I'm glad I'm an agnostic because I refuse to worship a God who would tell me to hate the people who protect my way of life.