This makes me sick.... and very very sad.

From Time Magazine: "The Price of Free Speech." Oct. 4, 2010

So apparently I have been oblivious to this recent news item that Time reported on. There is a church called the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, KS that stages protests at military funerals because they believe God is punishing troops (whether or not they themselves were gay) for America's tolerance of homosexuality. They protested at a funeral for Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder and Matthew's dad decided to sue them and now the case has made it to the Supreme Court for a ruling on Oct 6th. The actual legal battle is quite fascinating actually... who has the right to free speech and how far does that right extend vs who has the right to peaceful assembly and and religion and what happens when these two rights are in conflict. Based on the legality of the matter and the specifics of the case, I actually do think that the Westboro Church's right to protest should be upheld. BUT that is besides the point. This is what gets me sick/angry/sad...

*Signs that read: "Thank God for dead soldiers" held by a 13 year oild girl with a blond ponytail.

*The church (which has been denounced from the Southern Baptist Convention!!... and that says A LOT) is anti-gay, anti-Catholic(because priests are pedophiles), anti-semitic (because Jews killed Jesus.... EVEN THOUGH, wait a minute, wasn't Jesus JEWISH!?!), and anti-America (because it is home to all these heathens).

What made me actually write this entry were these final notes:

*A six-year-old girl wearing gray shorts dotted with pink hearts and yellow stars holding a "You're going to hell" sign and singing "God hates the world" to the tune of "We are the world."

*The Pastor said, "You can't preach the bible if you don't preach God's hate!"

*sigh* I don't want to get so angry that my anger is unproductive or reactionary. But it's so hard to contain how upset I am about the fact that I know this guy is not the only one who believes this. That God's hate rules, that we should celebrate God's hate, that God punishes and kills and hates. And I've taken enough psych classes to know that a lot of that inevitably stems from the believers' own hate (either of him/herself, or of other people) or his/her treatment as a child, abandonment/love/self-acceptance issues, etc etc. Why else would someone be this cruel, and preach this cruelty? But what's really most on my mind... is how do we change these people? How do we get them to have eyes to see and ears to hear the real truth of love and beauty in this world? How do we transform statements of hate into statements of love? This pastor and his church (which, it turns out, is almost solely him and his family... he has 13 children..) obviously have a ton of energy and seem to genuinely care about people's salvation... but it seems SO misdirected. Can we fix/help this? And how in world do I remain open-minded about these kinds of beliefs? Is it really okay for them to believe what they want, or is there a line that must be drawn, a point at which I must speak up and out and against what these people are saying? Or is this just as murky of a situation as the whole First Amendment debate?

God is love. God loves the world. Amen.