Anti-gay church plans protests at soldier funerals
Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., said it would demonstrate against homosexuality at Saturday’s funerals for Staff Sgt. Asbury Fred Hawn of Smyrna and Spc. Gary Reese Jr. of Ashland City.
“With a wife and children, this brave fallen soldier is obviously not gay, so I don’t understand this type of church protest,” the Rev. James Averitt of Bellwood Baptist said of Hawn’s funeral. “I don’t understand their point.”
Followers of Westboro Baptist contend America has been co-opted by gays, and that God’s wrath is rightfully killing soldiers who are fighting to defend a nation that defies the Bible.
Church literature promoting the protests says, “They turned America over to fags; they’re coming home in body bags.” About 60 members have demonstrated at soldier funerals across the nation, including at the Aug. 11 service for Sgt. James Dustin “Dusty” Carroll in McKenzie in West Tennessee, church officials said.
“Honestly, I think it’s disrespectful,” said Reese’s father, Gary Reese. “The irony is my son lost his life trying to spread the freedom that grants these people the right to do this. I don’t appreciate it, and I certainly don’t support it.”
The pastor of Murfreesboro’s St. Paul’s Episcopal church is urging mourners to ignore the protest he described as an “abomination.”
“They don’t hear what you say, anyway,” Gene Wise told The Daily News Journal. “It’s useless to try to evangelize to them. They have not shown themselves to be nice people. We serve a God of love, hope and promise, and we are not in the judgment business.”
The church, which isn’t affiliated with a larger denomination, consists largely of the children, grandchildren and in-laws of founder the Rev. Fred Phelps. Before the military protests started, the group picketed AIDS patient funerals and the funerals of newsmakers such as U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Sr. and singer-turned-politician Sonny Bono.
“This nation is being punished,” Shirley Phelps-Roper, the church’s lawyer and Phelps’ daughter, told The Tennessean. “Our job is to make America know her abomination. So we have to be timely and we have to be topical. We have to help America connect the dots.”