Funeral protests only hurt survivors
Members of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., and other churches and groups like them, should be ashamed. Protesting at funerals is spineless, cowardly, gutless, and immoral.
I can’t think of anything more disgusting than protesting someone’s funeral. A person is dead, no longer able to defend themselves, so it’s pretty cowardly to show up then to voice your opinion about the decisions they made during their life.
People who do this aren’t tormenting the dead. They are tormenting the living. Protesting a funeral only torments the family, which is already in misery because they lost a loved one.
Mourning, despite what someone may have done in their life and any disapproval the family may have felt, is natural. What did the grandmothers, grandfathers, mother, father, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends do to deserve protesters?
I heard Westboro Baptist Church wants to protest the funeral of Heath Ledger because he played a gay cowboy in the 2005 film ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ Before this, they, and others like them, demonstrated at funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. This, they say, is their way of protesting the war.
For me, I choose to follow, ‘Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment that you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.’
Simply put, people who judge others will be judged for their own judgments of others, and with the same intensity in which they judge.
I wonder if their judgment day will have some of the same types of protests they give those who have died and the family members and friends they left behind? These protesters walk around saying hateful words, screaming obscenities, spitting and holding signs on which they have written despicable things.
According to Westboro’s leader Fred Phelps, I refuse to call him a pastor, Ledger ‘used his position of prominence to say God is a liar and that homosexuality is not an abomination.’
That’s a bunch of bunk. Apparently these people want to hate so badly they have to read into it things that aren’t there. I watched the movie and nowhere in it does it state the ‘fact’ Phelps claims. Obvious to anyone who watched it, which apparently Phelps did not, these guys were tormented, by themselves and by others, their entire lives by what they knew to be wrong.
Quite frankly, I liked the movie. I walked away knowing three things: Life for gays must not be as joyful as the name given them indicates, Heath Ledger proved to be a tremendous actor, and hate-mongers have way too much time on their hands if they have enough of it to torment others.
Because the family is aware this church is planning to disrespect Ledger, they are rightfully trying to keep the funeral a secret, which torments the lead tormentor.
Bravo to the family members of Ledger who just want to bury him in peace. God willing, those tormentors won’t find the money to travel there, even if they find out where. I’m not sure what was going on in his life that led to this tragedy, and it was a tragedy, but his family doesn’t deserve spineless protesters taking away what should be their quiet good-bye.
Lisa Hobbs is a reporter for the Standard. She can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at citynews@southernstandard.com.