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Westboro Baptist Church Still Not Acting Like A ‘Church’

By Becky Padilla
Published on: 13:35 PST, Mar 16, 2016

Westboro Baptist Church is at it again. This time TMZ says Westboro is vowing to boycott the first openly gay college basketball player during March Madness, Derrick Gordon from Seton Hall. Not that most people care. Westboro actually thinks Donald Trump is too “fringe” to be president. So much for figuring out their logic.

To say they are a church feels blasphemous, so they will be referred to without that label. Westboro Baptist’s record thus far is incredulous to say the least. This group goes out of their way to be shortsighted, disrespectful, dishonorable, insulting, hateful, and pretty far out there on the reality scale. And yet, there continue to be about 40 loyal members, mostly comprised of the large family, but some days that seems like 40 too many.

The “church” is based out of Topeka, Kansas, and is actually recognized as a hate group. That is one thing they do well — hate. They hate gay people. They hate Jewish people. They hate the military. They hate anybody who approves of or fraternizes with any of those groups. They think the whole world is doomed and we are ALL going to hell. They are monitored by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Westboro Baptist is an unaffiliated Baptist group that has been denounced by the two largest Baptist denominations. Their actions have also been condemned by other mainstream denominations. Westboro’s idea of “assembling” (a blessed church event?) is picketing and protesting. They protest soldiers’ funerals and things related to the military and to war (because they hate that); they protest funerals of anybody having anything to do with homosexuality in any way (because they hate that); and they protest concerts of people with opinions opposite to theirs, and many have made that list: Brad Paisley, Foo Fighters, Vince Gill, and Lady Gaga, (whose fans turned the tables on the protesters at one of her concerts in St. Louis), to name but a few.

Westboro even thanked God on its Twitter account for the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, claiming it wasn’t terrorists who were actually responsible for the bombs, but that “GOD SENT THE BOMBS” because of something having to do with same-sex marriage, U.S. News reported. Westboro then vowed to protest the funerals of those victims who had died in the bombing.

The bright side of Westboro’s heinous behavior is that within a day, thousands had signed a “We the People” petition requesting that Westboro be banned from demonstrating at the funerals, and Westboro received a personal warning from the hacker group Anonymous that they would be dealt with if they protested the funerals.

Westboro does have limits to their gatherings, though. When Westboro Baptist’s fire and brimstone leader, Fred Phelps, died in 2014, CNN reported that Westboro would not hold a funeral for him. “We do not worship the dead,” his own daughter, Shirley Phelps, said.

And these people who pick and choose the worst of judgments from the Bible as an excuse to be the worst of judges obviously don’t care about the other parts of the Good Book that talk about forgiveness, grace, and kindness. Or that whole “judge not” idea. Which is fine. But now they say they won’t be supporting Donald Trump because, as Lee Ann Phelps, daughter-in-law of founder Fred Phelps, told the Daily Caller, “He’s sort of fringe.” As in too far out there? On the outer edge of…self-control? One might think Westboro Baptist would feel right at home there.

Evidently, they may feel he’s not extreme enough on his views about same-sex marriage. As Westboro cited in a press release issued before last week’s protest, Huffington Post reported, “Unless you are loudly, boldly and unequivocally proclaiming that ‘God Hates [Gays],’ that ‘[Gays] Doom Nations,’ and that America is therefore doomed, you are not a legitimate candidate to lead this nation in these last, dark days AND you are ashamed of Christ.”

Perhaps Westboro Baptist should be more concerned with their shameful behavior.

[Photo by Julie Denesha/Getty Images]

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