Hundreds of Texas A&M students gathered this week to form a human wall around the funeral service of a soldier to protect his family from Westboro Baptist Church protesters, KBTX.com reports.
Texas A&M alum Lt. Col. Roy Tisdale died on June 28 during a safety briefing at Fort Bragg, N.C. Tisdale was killed by another soldier who then fatally shot himself.
Tisdale had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the days after the soldier's death, word spread that Westboro Baptist Church members were planning to protest Tisdale's funeral.
Described as a "homophobic and anti-Semitic hate group" by the Anti-Defamation League, Westboro Baptist Church regularly stages protests around the country.
Texas A&M was wrong to bail on the Big 12, but the Aggies got this one right.
ReplyDeleteGood job!
Gig 'em, Aggies!
Good on them. The WBC are a bunch of loons.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder, though, whether we would have seen a similar outpouring of support from a college in middle-American football territory if the funeral had been for, say, a gay man.
The WBC wasn't really on the radar of most Americans when it was only protesting at the funerals of people like Matthew Shepard, or at courthouses in Iowa after the legalization of gay marriage. Concern over WBC's hateful tactics really only emerged as a mainstream issue when they began protesting at soldiers' funerals.
I suppose it's good that more Americans now recognize how deranged the WBC members are; it's a shame that it took them targeting the sacred cow of the military for it to register with most people.
Exactly! For years the WBC were protesting at the funerals of homosexual people, and while they got some response from the gay community and people like Michael Moore, they never really broke through into the mainstream. It wasn't until they hit on the PR idea of protesting at military funerals that they got the exposure that they wanted.
DeleteFor a moment I thought he must have been a gay soldier, and was moved to tears. Now I see after the jump that "the group, which is based in Kansas, frequently targets military funerals because of 'a belief that God punishes soldiers because of America's tolerance of gays.'"
ReplyDeleteWhich is truly mind-bogglingly insane, and one wonders what on earth God is doing to Iraqi and Afghan soldiers and citizens and why.
But that twisted logic makes soldiers honorary gay people, and I can live with the Aggies' action.
Rolling Thunder does this sometimes, too. Motorcycle engines are really good for drowning out protestors (of course, they also destroy any possibility of a quiet funeral, but sadly Phelps et al. had already done that).
ReplyDeleteAnd if Phelps shows up on your campus, consider a Phelps-A-Thon -- another good way to counter these nuts, at least as much as possible. I'm pretty tolerant of religious differences (and even of those who make Biblical arguments against homosexuality, although I don't agree with them), but the fact that these people call themselves a Christian "Church" really bothers me. If we're all one body, they're the wart that really needs removal, or the sore that needs healing, or something.
There's a link on Phelp-A-Thon, but it's not showing unless you mouse over it. Here's the url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phelps-A-Thon .
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