The funeral for Elizabeth Edwards will take place this afternoon in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her grown daughter and two preteen children will look on as she's laid to rest beside her son who died at the age of 16. To anyone with even a shred of human decency, this is a heartbreaking scene. It's hard to imagine feeling anything but compassion for this family and an innate desire to somehow ease their suffering. However, I'm sad to say that there are people who don't have a shred of human decency. Enter our very own Star Spangled Taliban, the Westboro Baptist Church. They are sending a contingent of their hate merchants who will be celebrating her death, brandishing signs saying, among other things, "Thank God for breast cancer" and otherwise doing what they can to salt the wounds of the suffering children who have just lost their mother.
The perverse irony is that these sadistic monsters are perpetrating this viciousness in the name of God. There is nothing divine about their inhuman cruelty, and claiming that it's done to worship The Prince of Peace is like honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. by denying blacks the right to sit at the front of a bus. This is apparently lost on people like Fred Phelps. Because religion should and does foster the best elements of humankind, I still find myself unable to make peace with the fact that religious fundamentalism and zealotry are responsible for humanity at its absolute worst. Whether we're talking about al-Qaeda or the Westboro Baptist Church, the depravity of these warped fundamentalists, comes from an abyss of hatred and evil whose depth is difficult if not impossible to plumb.
Luckily, these cretins from the WBC have marginalized themselves by visiting their unique brand of ugliness upon the grieving families of military personnel who gave their lives, generally at a very young age. Otherwise, I fear that they might have wider appeal among religious conservatives in this country. Remember that in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson went on television to advance the view that we were deservedly attacked because, among other things, we don't sufficiently subjugate women or mistreat gays and lesbians. Thus, in the view of Robertson, Falwell and the intolerant millions for whom they speak, God apparently lifted His magical force field protecting our country just so innocent masses could be slaughtered as a cautionary tale whose moral is to be more judgmental and intolerant. To his credit, President George W. Bush, himself a conservative Christian, immediately repudiated this filth. We must remember that while Pat Robertson and those like him would be in the fringe of any other advanced society, he is in the mainstream in this country. In 1988 he finished second in the Iowa caucus for the Republican presidential nomination. Eventual nominee and president, George H.W. Bush finished third.
First Amendment protection applies equally to everyone in this country including the wretched, despicable hatemongers from the WBC and I wouldn't want it any other way. They have the right to worship as they choose, to speak freely and to protest, although like all rights certain reasonable restrictions may apply. Freedom of speech is, however, a two-way street and good people must stand up and say in no uncertain terms that what Fred Phelps and his minions do is an unmitigated disgrace, deplorable in the eyes of anyone with a scintilla of decency or Christian charity.
