Anger about protesting funerals

The Constitution affirms life, liberty and happiness. The Amendments provide for and enforce the right to free speech, practice of religion, emancipation and suffrage as well as others. In no case, circumstance or envisioning of the above is the right of one individual pre-eminent over another. The only exception of that is when the need of the nation exceeds that of a person, as in a time of war. I’m not a lawyer but that is how I have always understood the articles upon which this nation is founded.

Compared to any other nation in the world, America enjoys the greatest freedoms for its citizens. If you wish to dispute that, live (not visit or vacation) in another nation and see the difference. I have and it has only further confirmed, for me, that this is the greatest nation - even with every social and economic problem we have today. I do not doubt that it is this freedom and greatness that has caused some nations to envy and others to seek our destruction.

Given the above statements one has to question the reasoning of some members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka. I wish to ask them, or anyone else who shares their beliefs, how they can justify the disruption of the funerals of the men and women who have died in support of the above. I will try to be civil, but frankly this enrages me. The desecration of a private and austere ceremonies should not be taken lightly. Were this a nation less free, and I were to hold more power then I would have them flagellated publicly.

Let me take a step back and more fully explain my disgust. Members of this congregation believe that, because gays exist in America and are not stoned to death, that God is killing our soldiers, the various miners recently, and I would not doubt that with that line of thinking those that have died in the Hurricane and resultant flooding in New Orleans. I wouldn’t dare make up this clap-trap.

The Westboro Baptist Church stated via their attorney, “states cannot interfere with their message that the soldiers were struck down by God because they were fighting for a country that harbors homosexuals and adulterers.” Members of the church have gone across the country to funerals for military personnel and held up signs saying “God Made IEDs” and other similar statements. Outside a memorial for the miners that died in the Sago Mine tragedy a sign by the members read “Thank God for Dead Miners.”

I understand the right to free speech, and like several members of my family I have volunteered to support that right and others with my life. Even speech that I do not like or believe still is protected by that right. That does not give someone else the right to cause harm. Much in the way that yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater is illegal, I see this as the same thing. While I will stand by as these, I think the phrase deluded fools is to light but that is my opinion, individuals wish to protest laws and ideals of the government, I will not allow them to infringe on the rights of other citizens, and the honored dead of our military services, without comment.

How dare they interfere with the final respects of the loved ones of our soldiers, and desecrate the lives given in support of this nation. If it were not for men and women, living and dead, in the past and actively today, that stand up for our nation the Westboro Baptist Church would not have the ability to make comment. In other governments around the world, actions not nearly as offensive as theirs would result in militia, secret police or others walking up and shooting them dead where they stand. Were it not for the blood shed for our nation, whether or not it was right or the exact beliefs of those who served, we would not exist in this government today. There may not even be a baptist or any other type of church, synagogue, temple or religion without the United States of America (the Soviet Union as an example believed in atheism as the only form of religious expression).

Let me say directly to these individuals, whom I do not see fit to call miserable wretches, that God (no matter what faith you follow) does not make roadside bombs. God does not make mass murderers or nuclear weapons or even a club. God does not create wars. These are all things that Man does. Humanity is flawed, and of those flaws violence against anything that is not exactly like us (whomever the us is) is our worst crime. Second might be our ability to reshape and misinterpret virtually anything as a sign to confirm our acts of violence as justified. Yes I feel your acts of ‘protest’ are violent, misbegotten and evil. If the various states do not pass laws to prohibit or at least restrict, what I feel are, repugnant actions like your I will sue them.

This is what I think, what do you think?